I think the only thing I love more than shooting night shots is shooting into the sun. In fact it may edge out even night shooting. The problem of course is there is such a limited time for shooting like this. Sunrise in the parks is pretty much out except for very special occasions though you can still get a bit of great light if you get in the parks when they first open. This leaves you with basically sunset and they call it golden hour for a reason. It only lasts about an hour. I try to make the most of it but I’m never fully satisfied with the number of shots I’m able to get, even with me rushing around whatever park I’m in to take full advantage of the golden hour.
For this shot I bumped the ISO a bit, even though I was shooting directly into the setting sun as I needed an extra fast shutter speed to freeze the fast moving train. I’m at ISO 320 and 1/1250 sec for this shot. I bracketed as well so that I could do some masking in the sky to further help with not completely blowing out the sky. This means obviously everything doesn’t line up as the train is moving through the scene but I only need the additional shots for the sky. I use the base exposure for everything else and boost the shadows significantly to get a good exposure on the foreground. Fortunately with the Nikon D810 sensor this is no sweat. Editing involves quite a few levels adjustments, color balancing, saturation adjustments and light painting to get the final result.
