The perfect sunset

Capturing a truly memorable sunset isn’t just luck. It’s timing, patience, and knowing when not to pack away your camera.

Many photographers aim to shoot just before the sun dips below the horizon, when the light is still strong but softening. But often, the real magic happens after the sun has disappeared. This is the start of the golden hour, when the sky glows with a gentle warmth, and the landscape is bathed in light that feels both soft and dramatic. In these moments, colours deepen, shadows lengthen, and your photographs can take on an almost painterly quality. Experiment with exposures and compositions here, and you may find your best images emerge after most people have already gone home.

Clouds are the unsung heroes of a great sunset. Without them, you may just get a flat orange glow. With them, the sky becomes a canvas. As the sun sinks lower, it lights the clouds from beneath, scattering reds, oranges, pinks, and purples across the horizon. Thin cirrus clouds can streak the sky with delicate lines; thicker cumulus clouds can catch the light in dramatic blocks; higher-altitude formations refract the colours differently still. The constant drift and shift of the clouds mean every minute the scene changes, offering a fresh frame to capture.

In the end, a perfect sunset isn’t only about light, it’s about the collaboration between sky, clouds, and timing. That’s something we often explore in our photography workshops too, where we head out into Barmouth’s landscapes to practice capturing those fleeting, golden moments.