We had a beautiful sunset this evening at The Institute and it got me thinking about other sunsets I’ve seen around the area. Like this one down in Arches National Park. Because we travel so much our schedule gets pretty darn hectic you know, what with having to look at stuff to see if it’s pretty enough to photograph, then get in a good spot so all the photographic bits are in the right places, finding the camera and getting it untangled from under the seat where it got kicked when we made a burger run and the lens hood got all cocked funny and you have to wrench it off so it sits right, then figuring out the settings and making adjustments to the camera, getting all cheesed off because the flash card wasn’t formatted and you have to stop and do that otherwise the sky comes out all maroon color, I mean it’s lucky we get a sunset picture taken at all.

Then of course there’s the timing of the shot. You got to get it just right otherwise it just looks like noon or 3 in the afternoon or 11:30 in the morning. Some photographers make a big hairy deal about getting to the picture site real early and getting all their gear sorted out and acting like they’re all professional and everything, but then by the time sunset hits they’re all whacked out, bored stupid, and taking a nap in the back seat and miss the whole deal. Other’s have been dawdling, stopping to read all the signs on the side of the road, checking their email, making calls, letting the dog out to do its business, watching other photographers to see what they’re shooting, eating the rest of the potato salad from lunch so it doesn’t go bad, and then they realize “Holy Mackerel it’s dark out, I’ve missed sunset”.

We at The Institute are trained professionals and don’t make dorky mistakes like that. We have it together. We instinctively know where the best shots are, exactly what time the sun will be perfect for setting, how to get all the stuff in the picture that makes it one of those that makes you go “Whoa, man, Look here, this is far out”. This is why we’re so freaking famous. If you check out the photo closely you’ll see that everything that is in it is supposed to be there. There’s ground and sky and rocks all over the place, mountains, bushes, everything you need. We pride ourselves on that. We don’t leave good stuff out. The timing in the shot is like super excellent for the right sunset spectacular lollapalooza look, because we got that stuff down cold and we even got the right kind of clouds in there. Have we got this nailed or what.

There’s some kind of rule or fact, or probably somebody just pulled it out of the back of their long johns, that you have to take like 12 billion and eight sunset photos to get one good one. We here at the Institute say BullPucky! our results are better than that. In fact we’ve gone out when the sun was going down and gotten hallway decent shots of sunset activity several nights in a row. We’re just that good. But then that’s just our and half the English-speaking people of the world’s opinion, so what do we know. Tomorrow when the sun goes down we’re going out and photograph it, I bet those shots will be good too.