Hi @abigail16! It seems you’ve figured out the aperture trick for sunstars! Good job! (and welcome to Lenspiration by the way!)
I think you (@abigail16) and @nateb might be referring to two different phenomena here. Abby, in your photos, you’ve narrowed your aperture and partially occluded the sun in order to get the “sun-star” effect (which is not usually a post-processing filter, but an in-camera setting—stop down to like f/11 or f/16 or narrower—though you certainly can photoshop these in). The amount of “rays” in the sun-star here depends on which lens you’re using, as it has to do with the way the lens is constructed. A lot of kit lenses will give you six-pointed sun stars (my Canon EF-S 18-200 does that), while other lenses (like my 10-18 or my 50mm or my 17-55) will give you more points. You can pretty much shoot these with anywhere: you need to stop down your aperture (use Aperture Priority mode or Manual and set it to f/11 or higher) and shoot into a bright light source that is partially occluded.
@nateb, I think you’re referring more to a weather phenomenon, and you’re right, it is highly elusive. You need to have—again—a partially occluded sun (trees, mountains, buildings, and thick, low-altitude clouds work well) and then you need something for the sun to light up or shine through. If you’re outside, you need mist or fog (early morning hours right after sunrise are ideal for this!). If you’re inside, a really dusty room will do the same thing. With these, your aperture matters less. These are also harder (though not impossible!) to photoshop in.
Now back to the original photos…
@abigail16, I’m assuming you’re trying to use the sun-star effect, and you’re using it well here. One way you could make your images a lot more powerful is to not make the sun the main feature of the composition. Think of the sun-star as an ingredient (like sugar!) and not the whole recipe—you need other ingredients to make it taste good. This is why your first image with the fence in my opinion is much more powerful than the second. There’s a lot to like here: you’ve included the foreground, you shot from a lower perspective, you’ve got the fence as a lead-in line, and then you’ve got a really nice lens-flare acting as another lead-in line. A couple of things you could improve on would be space (the image feels “crowded”) and including a stronger subject (your lead-in lines seem to just point to the back fence… which is okay but could be better). To fix space, I would move a touch closer to the fence and turn your camera a little bit more to the right… or I would jump the fence to put it on the right side of the image so I can show more of that beautiful open sky.
To fix the subject is a lot more subjective… you’ve got to ask yourself “what drew me to this location and made me say ‘I want to take a picture of that'”. Once you figure out what that thing is, try to emphasize it by using the rule of thirds and moving your camera around to remove as many things that could distract from it as possible. (This is one of the hardest things to do in photography by the way and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to master it).
Hope this was helpful! and if you have questions don’t hesitate to tag me. 🙂
— @loganlamar
