Can you offset a sunset?

[battletone]

Added

 

[astrostu]

What are you asking?

 

[battletone]

What are you asking?

How is the composition.

 

[Derrel]

This would be the perfect place to have used a hard-edged Neutral Density filter to "hold back" the bright sky,and to allow the lake scene at the bottom to show up. As it is shown, the composition is unsuccessful--the dark lower 2/3 of the image is devoid of detail, which doesn't really bring us into the scene. it looks like sunset over the lake, but we can't see the lake. The position of the sun though seems about right for a vertical composition.

I might have tried going the other way, with only a small amount of dark space at the bottom of the frame, and the entire top of the photo filled with sky tones, with the sunset at the bottom left area maybe 1/4 of the way up from the bottom of the frame.

 

[ErectedGryphon]

I concur with the comments above, if your going to do landscapes, sunsets, sunrises, etc.

You might want to invest in something like this: COKIN Creative System - The Holder System

 

[battletone]

Its the St Croix river, and the horizon is the top of the banks steep side. Extreme contrast.

I will check out that link a little later when I have some more time.

As for the hard ND filter..... I haven't even used a normal ND and will look into that too. I tried taking some longer exposures so I could maybe go the HDR route, but the exposures that were long enough to get the bottom exposed ended up washed out looking.

In the mean time, I added another exposure to the original post. Is that one better for a blacked out foreground?