Some years ago now I was assisting my mentor and former boss, Martin Schoeller, on a shoot in New York. I recall we were on the east side of the city along 11^th ave racing around the corner to catch the last of the sunlight. Someone on set said “Oh that sunset! Make sure you get that!” To which Martin semi-jokingly replied, “Sunsets are for amateurs.” I have thought about this moment and the subsequent images that were created on this shoot countless times. I suspect what I recall most was the fact that Martin photographed his subject entirely in natural light (which so rarely happened), and this fact has cemented those images in my brain for years now.

The other thing that has played over and over in my head is the sentence “Sunsets are for amateurs.” I think about this all the time when I compose a shot with the setting sun in the background, lens flare crashing through the frame. Or every time I point my camera at a sunset along the Maine coast. It feels like sometimes I can’t help but look at a sunset, and in time I have grown to appreciate the challenge of making an images that utilizes only the sunset as a light source. I found these images while organizing some hard drives today, they are from the last sunset of 2016.