From my house, I can’t see the setting sun — it’s hidden by high ground behind me, to the west — but I do catch its reflection off the windows on the opposite shore of the pond. At times, the effects can be dramatic.
Early one evening, I happened to glance out and see a bright, glittery secondary reflection of the sun’s rays off the water. Where the primary reflection was coming from, I couldn’t tell. Following my rule of “shoot first and ask questions later,” I grabbed the camera and clicked away. In another five minutes, the fabulous glitter had faded into oblivion, as the low sun finally fell from grace.
As I was putting the camera away, I happened to look up. For a split second, I caught a blinding flash off a bank of second-story windows on the apartment building directly opposite. Suddenly, I knew the source.
As to shooting technique, I exposed for the brightest part of the glitter, knowing that the brightness range of the scene was beyond the camera’s ability to capture, and that the water would “drop out,” that is, appear dark — which proved true until the last frame, when the glitter paled and the water at last came into view.