Starpod in Winter (or Experiments in Photography)

I had just gotten home from work the other day and stopped to admire the sunset before diving into unloading the car. I LOVE winter trees, and the Starpod silhouetted on the hill was so nice. Once again I was tempted to attempt the impossible (at least for super amateur photographers like me) and capture this moment in megapixels. The sky was a perfect mix of blues, yellows and oranges, but the first photo came out like this....all blue. Pretty, but not at all what the sky looked like.

I then switched to my camera's "sunset" setting and got the following picture, taken only seconds after the first. This one included the yellows and oranges, but completely deleted out the blue!

So, you'll just have to use your photoshopping imagination and combine these two photos in your brain to get an idea of the actual scene I was viewing.

The irony is, I've just spent all day at work researching photography equipment and reading reviews on cameras so I can make some purchases for work. My goal is to be able to take over the role of photographer for my boss' business, North American Gem Carvers (or rather revive the role, seeing as how our previous webmaster and photographing employee hasn't been with us for 5 or so years now). For the record, if you click on the above link, I did in fact take the photo of "Phoenix" that shows up on the front page, and am pretty darn proud of it if I do say so myself. However, if you click the "Galleries" link and view any of the other photos of gem art on the website, those were not me, but that's what I'm aiming for. Taking photos of gem art, it turns out, is as elusive as trying to capture a beautiful sunset. But, I aim to try. At least I'll have appropriate equipment now, so I'll only be able to blame myself for poor results.

This, by the way, is why my job is so hard to describe when the inevitable question "what do you do?" comes along. Well, I spend my summers pulling weeds and canning tomatoes, and my winters becoming an expert in gemstones, all under the same employment umbrella.