Red Smog Sun

Last night we had a pretty weird moon here in the MTL. There was a high smog advisory in effect and after 7pm when the sun started to head for the horizon and got behind the layer of haze, it turned red.

I had originally planned to go out to get some sunset shots atop a small hill by my house that gives you a good vantage point to shoot St. Joseph's Oratory and the west side of Mount Royal, but then saw the almost cloud cover like haze and said to myself 'wait for a better evening'. After I got the dog leashed up I remembered reading a post on Digital Photography School about how it is about making time to shoot every day, even if it is just 10 or twenty minutes and grabbed the Canon and slid it in my backpack.

Once i got up by the Auditorium, I could see the red of the sun and took a couple of test shot to adjust the levels to the point it would take one where the edges of the sun were clearly defined and the color came out a bit. Then I headed right down to the waters edge and set the camera up for a series of bracketed shots. Here is what the middle straight up image looked like.


After I got home I took the three photos and ran them through Photomatix and came to realize that I still had the camera set to run on large file jpegs and not large + raw. Bummer. It would have turned out much better, but I'll know for next time. Check every setting and never assume the camera is reading your mind. here is what the finished product looked like.