Sunsets Anonymous
By Thomas Jooss
27 January 2008
Sunsets are cheap. They are cliche. Every photographer knows that. Anyone can point a cheap point-and-shoot camera at the evening sky and get great results. It doesn't require any skill.
Hardly any "serious" photographers shoot sunsets and most look down on those who do. Sunsets are for snapshooters. When a "serious" photographer takes a picture of a sunset, he often keeps it to himself because he doesn't want to be labeled a snapshooter.
I know all that.
Why is it, then, that every time is see a decent sunset I grab my camera bag and run outside to happily snap away at it? Is it all just me not caring what some stiff, stuck up photography snobs think about me? Is it just rebellion against the photographic establishment? I don't think so. Sure I don't care about some ignorants dismissing my photos just because I shot a cheap cliche subject, but that's not it, that doesn't make me shoot sunsets all the time. No, there must be more.
There is just something about the wonderful colors of a nice sunset that makes me ignore the voice in my head telling me that I already have around twelve pictures that look just like the one I am about to take and probably more than a hundred that look vaguely similar. It just doesn't matter, as long as I capture these beautiful colors on film.
When the film is developed and I look at the pictures, they are usually beautiful and I enjoy looking at them very much, but I can't shake the thought that I already have lots and lots that look just the same. I know that I just took pictures that I already took so many times before, and countless others took many more before me.
Then I look up, look out of the window, see the sun setting, toss the pictures aside, grab my camera bag and start running...
My name is Thomas, and I'm addicted to sunsets.
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