My Top 3 Sunset Photography Spots with a View in Los Angeles
Los Angeles is a great hub for both casual adventurers and professional travel photographers to visit and capture some beautiful golden hour images. A majority of my own photos are taken at sunset and in a variety of different landscapes. I have taken sunset photos in various beaches and cityscapes, but for this blog post, I wanted to focus on some of my favorite spots to take sunset photos with a bit of an aerial view (ones that you can get without a drone) in Los Angeles.
The spots I’m mentioning offer a nice wide-angle view that looks beautiful during sunset. All of the photos in this blog are captured with my mirrorless Sony A7R III camera, so these views are possible to capture with a handheld camera, or even just your phone.
Mount Hollywood/The Griffith Observatory
The Griffith Observatory is a beautifully-designed structure itself, but whenever I travel to this spot, I find myself spending more time looking at the mountain views around the building than going inside the observatory itself. The sun sets over the Hollywood sign and mountains so you get a beautiful golden backlight over the mountains and through part of the city. At such an elevated position, you can set up a variety of different compositions.
You can even take the stairs up the building to a higher point and get an even higher top-down shot. Usually there are a lot of people who will walk up the Observatory to get this wide shot during sunset.
For landscape and travel photographers searching for a beautiful mix of natural and urban landscape without a drone, I think this destination will serve you well.
EL MATADOR BEACH
I don’t travel to El Matador Beach in Malibu very often because it is incredibly distant from central Los Angeles. This spot can be especially difficult to visit if you don’t have a car. But if you do get the opportunity to travel to this beautiful destination, it is more than worth it as El Matador Beach boasts beautiful rocky formations that can make for some interesting compositions.
Taking wide-angle photos from the sand is already enough to capture some beautiful sunset images with your camera, but you also stand on the bluff to get some wide-angle shots of the entire beach and capture a lot of the beautiful rock formations in frame. I think it’s worth noting that if you do visit this beach, you’ll want to check when high-tide comes, as I’ve seen the entire ground of the beach covered in the beautiful ocean waves. This won’t really matter if you’re taking photos from the bluff, but if you plan on getting some shots on the actual sand, you might want to prepare in advance.
In Los Angeles, the sun will set over the ocean, so if you want to incorporate a model into your shot and you want their face to be illuminated by the golden sun without any reflectors, then you’ll want to do that at sunset. Otherwise, your model will be backlit.
Blue Ribbon Garden - Walt Disney Concert Hall
A lot of people might be familiar with the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, but people might not know about the small patio up the stairs of the building. This area won’t always be consistently open because the concert hall has events and it has ended up closing early.
But should you get the opportunity to stay during sunset, you can look out at a beautiful sunset over part of the city. While it doesn’t have the most expansive view, some of my favorite sunset photos have come from this spot.
CONCLUSION
Once again, this is only a small part of Los Angeles that I’m covering based on the different places I have traveled. There are a lot of photography spots to explore and as a travel photographer, I’ve learned that sometimes the best photo spot is one you accidentally stumble upon.
If you haven’t already, I invite you to see more examples of my Los Angeles photography, as I’m always on the lookout for new and exciting spots within my own city. I hope this post will help others take beautiful sunset photos, whether you’re a professional photographer or someone who just loves to chase sunsets.
