At Sunset!

This is one of my favorite pictures....I just love it! Andy and I were driving home and decided to stop at one of my favorite little spots, so I could take some pictures. It was so peaceful and relaxing. I'm finally remembering to bring my camera along most of the time now.
Manual mode, f/22, shutter speed 1/12, ISO 200
Do you see that weird little glare in the clouds? I asked my teacher about it and this was her reply... It's sunflare. That is when light come directly into your camera...it happens a lot with sunsets and sunrises because your are pointing your camera to the sun. It's a reflection of light on the glass in your lens.

If you use a lens hood, or even hold your hand slightly above the camera in the direction of the light you can block it.

Everything else in the image looks great! Do you have elements or photoshop? You can clone it out!
Manual mode, f/22 + 1/100 + ISO 400
The clouds were so cool!
Manual mode, f/22 + 1/12 + ISO 200
I love the clouds in this picture also and the sun setting behind the clouds was gorgeous! One thing I should mention to those of you who are learning as I am.....I should have had a shutter speed of at least 1/60 to prevent camera shake, since I was hand holding. I was sitting indian style and propping my elbows on my knees to keep my camera steady and I just got lucky. It's best to use a tripod if you're going to use a shutter speed less than 1/60. What I should have done was increased my ISO to 400, so I could have increased my shutter speed like I did in the photo above this one. Another note: If you increase your ISO that lets more light in and your picture will be lighter, so you will need to underexpose a bit to get it true to color and not lose those beautiful colors of the sunset. When you are metering....just play around with the exposure and try -1 or somewhere between -1 and -2 and you will see what I mean.