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Local Instagram Users Capture Never-Before-Seen Sunset

Written by: The MQ

“Wow, the beauty of this sunset is so good, it’s almost cinematic,” pro-Instagrammer Shelby said. “But I wish it would go away already so I could finish my movie.”
Photo by: Connor Gorry

A group of Instagrammers managed to photograph what they described as “a sunset like no one had ever seen in the transition between WebMD’s list of cancer symptoms and Donald Trump memes on Tumblr” last week.

The dedicated amateur photographers had just set out on their daily expedition to “connect with nature” on the beach when the sunset occurred. One of them happened to look up from his smartphone just as it was happening, and alerted the others, who were also staring at their smartphones, of the remarkable spectacle.

In an attempt to preserve the sunset’s ephemeral beauty for their many followers, the group immediately began snapping pictures of it with their phone cameras.

“It really was life-changing visual experience,” said the one who had spotted the sunset initially. “We just knew we had to capture it on camera.”

Another of the photographers gushed, “It was, like, the prettiest sunset I had ever seen. There were so many colors!” A third interjected, “Moments like these really make you appreciate the raw beauty of the outdoors.”

After approximately 30 seconds and 20 shots of the horizon at different angles, the group turned back to their phones and launched into a heated discussion about whether or not the Valencia filter was better than the Hefe for enhancing the bright orange hues of the sunset without making it “look all photoshopped.”

The real challenge, however, lay not in finding the sunset but sharing it on Instagram. Each group member was faced with the reportedly “grueling” process of editing the photos they had taken, coming up with appropriate hashtags, and, perhaps most crucially, garnering as many likes as possible.

One of the more experienced Instagrammers provided a glimpse into the care and hard work behind every post by confiding, “I really want the Instagram community to get a feel for the authenticity of this moment, so of course I need to be very selective about choosing hashtags. I was thinking something like ‘#soblessed, #socal, #liveauthentic, #inspire, #believe, and #lovethejourney.”

After pausing briefly to post a selfie to her Snapchat story, she continued, “I think ‘#lovethejourney’ is a great hashtag for this picture because it really reminds you to unplug yourself from all your technology and just take a moment to enjoy your surroundings. I mean, if my friend hadn’t looked up from his phone, he wouldn’t have noticed that one sunset scene in ‘Gone With the Wind’ we were watching on his laptop, and we would have totally missed it!”

As for what lies on the creative horizon for the photographers, followers can look forward to some stunning close-ups of the human eye, portraits of attractive hipsters wrapped in large wool blankets on the beach, and cozy autumnal images of flat white espresso drinks resting atop copies of “The Fault In Our Stars” against rain-spattered windows.

Written by: Sarah Wernher

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