Dawn, Mt. St. Helena, Photo

Dawn, Mt. St. Helena, Soda Rock Lane. Maureen Carden asks: Okay, how did you get the extremely bright sunset and the shadowed but clearly visible landscape in the foreground, together in the same shot?

I aim camera at the sky to set the imager to get the most color saturation for the photo (point lens to sky, hold shutter partially down to lock lighting setting, then drop camera lower to reframe photo, and click. 

I'm a minimalist. I try and do as little as possible to my photos, other than hit the auto contrast button. Then in Picasa, I lightened the mid ranges a bit, and used the sky filter to keep sky value. It's like a windowshade pulled down on the top of the photo, it helps restore the color.

I also use several settings, distance, sunset, night, until I find the one I like. Truth be known, I mostly use distance straight up, no sunset filter, as I don't like the color range. I also ruin all my cameras with sunspots....