One of the things you never get tired of at sea is looking at sunsets. No two are ever the same and no one sunset is ever the same from moment to moment. That’s true on land, too, but an ocean sunset is just a little something extra. You’re always moving when you’re on a cruise, every swell of the water’s surface changing almost imperceptibly how the light bounces from the sun across the horizon, and there’s a different ambience to what you’re seeing brought about by the sound of the wind or the white noise of the ship slicing through the waves.
This photo was taken in 2016 during our Star Princess cruise around South America. We were cruising southwards at the time, down the coast of Argentina, and this was just before the most incredible sunset we’ve ever seen occurred. You can see that sunset as well as the original, untouched photo presented here at this link: Incredible Atlantic Ocean Sunset.
For the reprocessing of this photo I’ve simply expanded the dynamic range a bit more, increasing white and the overall contrast. A filter over the top was added to pull in more detail with a partially-opaque mask applied so that most of that effect was limited to the ocean surface (easy to do when you’ve got a perfectly level picture and no objects intersecting the horizon). A little increase in orange for a bit of warmth to counter the darker, more detailed tones finished this photo rework off. The result has more atmosphere, to me, and just goes to show that there are many different types of sunset and you don’t need clear blue skies to show off the colours on the horizon when dusk approaches.
