As explained in the following, I found my local sunset paradise.
One night in April 2025, I went back to capture the sunset.
A few minutes before sunset, I was amazed to see the fine curved clouds, the reflections and all the colors in the scene
I had to seize this magic moment.
At 16 mm, my lens was unable to capture the whole scene. So, I took five overlapped shots on my handheld to do a panorama, knowing Lightroom is very good for stitching photos. To achieve ETTR, I overexposed each shot by 1.3 stops.
Later, during postproduction in Lightroom, I created a sky mask and performed a dehaze set at +20. I inverted this mask and put the shadows to +100. Then, I pressed the AUTO button in LR to let the software perform all the other adjustments automatically! I did not manipulate the colors.
Once again, my preparation, planning, and gear familiarity paid off to capture a magic moment.