Have you ever looked at a sunset and find it hard to believe that the colors you're seeing are real? You take pictures with your phone or camera and it captures the beauty of the sunset but it doesn't justify the myriad of colors that your eyes are seeing.
I used to work in a printing facility with color matchers and graphic artists under me. It was not my field of expertise but I learned an important lesson: the millions of colors that our eyes can see could never be replicated on display screens or printed media.
In this post, I'd like to share with you photos of a very special sunset. These photos were taken at Medellin, Cebu (Philippines) and they remind me of times before the pandemic. It was one of my travels before the virus swept the world. I'll be ordering my photos in chronological order so you'll be able to see how the transition of colors took place.
MUTED COLORS
It was my second time visiting this place and the first time that I went there, I slept through the sunset. I just looked at the photos on my friends' phones and I saw shades of purple! I think I've never seen so much purple from a sunset before. I regretted passing the opportunity to witness the sunset.
On my next visit, I promised that I would not miss the sunset anymore. As the sun neared the horizon and the light started to dim, I got excited! But when I looked at the sky, I saw muted colors. I was a bit disappointed but I thought it was still beautiful.
I stared at the sun for a couple of minutes and realized that it was setting behind an island. I expected a sunset with the sun going down the horizon on the sea because that's how I saw the sunset in my friends' photos. I knew that because of the revolution of the Earth around the sun and its tilted axis the location of a sunset changes throughout the year.
I thought to myself that maybe this was all that I would get. I was impatient and didn't know the experience ahead of me.
STREAKS OF RED
As you keep staring at the sun during sunset, you won't realize that the colors are slowly changing until you see a big difference. With the sun out of sight, I saw beautiful streaks of red on the clouds and near the horizon. I got excited again. The west side of Cebu always gets the best sunsets but I think the sunsets at the northwestern part of the island gets are the most breathtaking. You can see from the photos below that the intensity of the reds and the oranges were getting stronger.
EXPLOSIVE HUES
And then, there it was, the full glory of the sunset. It was an explosion of colors and hues. Everything was just blanketed in fiery red and bright orange filters. I couldn't believe my eyes! It felt like I was in a different world. I took a lot of pictures on my phone but my photos could not justify what I was seeing with my own eyes.
I stopped taking photos and took in the majestic gradients that nature was showing me. My friends and I just stood by the beach and looked at the sky and the water. We were transfixed. I didn't see purple like the last sunset my friends saw but I didn't care. What I was seeing in front of me was more than I expected. The reason I slept before sunset on our first visit was that I was drunk. I wanted to dull my senses with the pain I was feeling from a recent breakup. How fitting it was to have a second chance at enjoying a beautiful sunset with my emotional state in a good place. It made me appreciate the experience more.
SOFT SHADES
And the colors changed again. The reds and the oranges were losing their intensity. The blue sky was taking over. The result was a softening of the colors. The once fiery surroundings were turning into pastel gradients. The afternoon was slowly losing to darkness. The lighting on the photos taken using my phone was turning a bit poor. Still, I like how the last part of the sunset was captured with the foaming waves as the foreground.
I knew the sunset was ending and we'd have to move on with our night. The last of the colors succumbed to the darkness and we were starting to see a few stars in the sky. I remember we made a bonfire by the beach and danced and drank before a light rain made us go inside our room.
That's it! I'm happy to be able to post for the first here at Photography Lovers Community. I don't consider myself a photographer but I like taking a lot of photos and editing them. I hope my pictures were worthy to be posted here.
I think I'll be posting more of my shots here in this community. I mostly take travel photos so you might find more of my posts in the Haveyoubeenhere Community. I didn't planning on writing about my trip to Kawit, Medellin because I want to be able to go back before I write about it.
If you want to know more about the trip, you can check out 
Thank you so much for stopping by to read my post and go through my photos. See you on my next blog. Cheers!
