Posts in Category: sunrise
12/8/2009
Breath of Snow
This has a look of frost to me, but it actually quite a heavy layer of snow, molded around every branch and twig. One good breath of wind and it is all gone! The low dawn light, just half behind picks out the detail.
Sony DSC H50 at about 400mm equivalent. F6.3 @ 1/200 @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
Added Clarity and Vibrance in Lightroom. Blackpoint to the right. Sharpen landscape preset.
From First Snow 12/09.
12/7/2009
Dressed for Winter Sunrise: never looked so good
Over-night snow, early sun, and this tree, though attractive at all times, really looks it best. This is, of course, an image all about shape, texture, and light. Very simple. Even more about the essentials than most photographs. I used the camera zoom to crop and frame for that effect.
Taken in the fields behind Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk ME, about 2 miles from home.
Sony DSC H50 at about 70mm equivalent. F5.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
You might think that a snow scene like this would require some exposure compensation, or the sand and snow program at the very least. But the light was low…sun just cresting the clouds along the horizon on a day approaching the solstice in Maine…and the intensity of the light was easily handled by the regular Program on the camera.
Auto color balance, auto tone in Lightroom. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen Landscapes preset.
From First Snow 12/09.
And, from the same morning, a little video that maybe captures the winter wonderland effect.
11/1/2009
Facing the Day
Happy Sunday! and Happy November! Can you believe it?
After 1) birds, and 2) Lighthouse, and 3) Gingerbread houses, the thing I imaged most often in Cape May on this last trip was the dawn. I was staying right across from the beach, and it was easy to crack my curtains to check the progress of daylight and get caught by the dawn. There were two wonderful sunrises while I was there and both of them pulled me out of the room early.
Of course, I was not alone. There were always a number of dawn walkers ahead of me on the beach…or maybe beach walkers caught by the dawn as I was.
This couple were clearly caught: I suspect by the little flock of Sanderlings along the tide line. I zoomed in to 240mm equivalent to frame the shot, knowing I could crop slightly in software to finish the composition.
Sony DSC H50, as above, at 240mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/30th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto. The image stabilization of the H50 made this easy, even without a tripod…or perhaps just gave me the confidence to shoot it.
In Lightroom I applied a slight color temperature adjustment, Recovery for the sky, along with added Clarity and Vibrance. Very slight Fill Light for the foreground. Sharpen Landscapes preset. I experimented with graduated filter effects but ended up not using them on this shot.
From Cape May 10/09.
10/25/2009
Another from a Cape May Dawn
Happy Sunday!
Capy May Gingerbread is always a treat. And the fad for white gingerbread is well past, or never caught on in Cape May. The Victorian era homes, now mostly B&Bs are painted as they were when new, in a full rainbow of colors. Even in the light of a cloudy dawn they have a glow.
Sony DSC H50 at about 110mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
This is another shot that required Lightroom’s Graduated Filter to bring up the foreground and make the scene look something like it would to the naked eye. GF from the bottom with added exposure, clarity, and just a touch of contrast. General application of Recover for the sky. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen Landscapes preset. Cropped slightly from both bottom and top for composition.
From Cape May 10/09.
For those of you who love Gingerbread, I walked around Cape May late yesterday afternoon as the rain held off and shot a quick gallery of Gingerbread images, using my little pocket Sanyo camera, to show my wife what Cape May is like. You might enjoy it too. Best Quality Cape May Gingerbread on Posterous.
10/24/2009
Cape May Sunrise
Without resorting to Neutral Density filters over the lens, sunrises are among the hardest of scenes to image. You have a great range of light, with a very bright band, generally, just at the horizon. Getting the foreground to look natural is a real challenge…such a challenge that we are used to seeing sunrise shots which, in fact, have the foreground much darker than it ever appears in real life…when you are standing there on the beach facing the sun.
With the Sony H50 I have learned to just bias the exposure somewhat for the sky, enough to keep the colors in the sunrise intense, and work the rest of the image in Lightroom. I just tip the camera up to take the exposure reading, then reframe. Quick and dirty, but it works.
Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/80th @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the sky and highlights in the dawn. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint to the right. Then I pulled a Graduated Filer Effect up from the bottom to just over the horizon and added exposure and brightness, as well as additional Clarity and a little Contrast to the foreground only.
From my new Cape May 10/09 gallery.
6/7/2009
Prairie Pothole Dawn
As I noted yesterday, the true prairie is mostly gone in North Dakota, replaced by wheat and soybean deserts. Even what appears to be open prairie on the National Wildlife Refuges (some of the first in the nation, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt’s love for the Dakota Territory and wildlife) is really a mix of mostly invasive species of vegetation. While the prairie is intact, the native plants are hardy enough to keep invasives out, but once the prairie is broken, then faster growing, more opportunistic plants that have followed man to the prairie rush in and claim the ground. Even intentional replanting of native species has not had much success in rebuilding broken prairie.
So this is close to to a Prairie Dawn as you get these days. The topography is right, and if you ignore the striding powerline and don’t look too closely at the vegetation, you can imagine yourself on the prairie.
Still, there is something to be said for embracing the moment as it is. This is what is, in North Dakota today, and in the early light of day it is beautiful. It has a value and a validity all its own…and is…I dare say, just as worthy of preservation, and of recording in this image.
Sony DSC H50 at about 80mm equivalent (for cropping). F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Cropped from the bottom in Lightroom to eliminate a fence and position the horizon. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Recovery for the sky. Black point to the right. I used a graduated filter effect from the bottom of the image up to just over the horizon to brighten, and to add Clarity and contrast for detail. Landscape sharpen preset.
From Potholes and Prairies 2009.
[After some comments: compare this. Which?
A Little Less Sky...more Landscape
5/21/2009
House of the rising sun!
So, woke up this morning without a picture to my name. No. Not really. But I was inspired to get out before my shower to see what was happening, photographically speaking, in the yard. The early sun caught in the dandelion was irresistible. I tried a bunch of angles: high, low, with the sun, against the sun, etc. For this shot I came in almost as close as possible. 1/2 inch or so. Any closer and the forward reach of the globe went totally out of focus. Maneuvering the sun right behind the center mass of the seed globe and still catching the light in the umbrellas took a bit of trial and error, but this one works, I think.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed auto. -.7 EV exposure compensation.
In Lightroom, lots of fill light for the stem and center, added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen. Some Recovery and blackpoint, and moved the exposure slider to the right slightly.
1/4/2009
Sanibel Light
This is a second view of the Sanibel Lighthouse against the New Year’s Day sunrise. For this I zoomed in enough to isolate the light, but keep significant sky. The sky behind the light, being well away from the sun, was not as spectacular, but still colorful. Exposure for the sky, metered in Programed Auto Wilde Matrix setting normally, since the sky dominated the image anyway, and I was willing to let the lighthouse go black. A pretty straightforward image.
Sony DSC H50 at about 400mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/200 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Recovery in Lightroom for the sky, added Clarity and Vibrance (Vibrance picked up some orange in the sky), and used the Sharpen Landscapes preset. Cropped some water out. Originally I put the horizon at the 1/3 line…moved the horizon lower and let the light itself have the power point.
The image is from the Sanibel and Everglades Gallery.
1/3/2009
New Year's Sunrise
Sunrise on January 1, 2009. The Sanibel Lighthouse from the causeway.
Timing is everything, and, while I might have been able to plan this shot, I certainly didn’t. We were on our way out to Sanibel for one last day of sun and birds, crossing the causeway in the early light, discussing where to go first. I was watching the sunrise out of the corner of my eye…well, considering the beauty of it, I was paying way more attention to it than I should have while driving.
“Or,” I said, “we could stop right here and wait for the sunrise.” We pulled in just before the last bridge to the island, drove down the beach as far as we could to get an angle where the lighthouse was as much against the sunrise as possible, and parked. I was getting out of the car just as the sun broke the horizon. Timing is everything.
I angled the camera up to read exposure from the sky while keeping the horizon in the focus zone (so that the camera would autofocus), locked exposure by pressing the shutter release half way, and then reframed for composition. I have taken a lot of sunrises and sunsets with the Sony H series cameras, so I can anticipate what the most balanced exposure looks like in the finder. Then too, I know the limits of the amount of Fill Light I can apply in Lightroom in post-processing to bring out the foreground, so I expose mostly for the sky, to get the intensity of the colors.
I took many exposures, from full wide angle, to full telephoto (catching just the lighthouse against the sky). I played with where the sun sat in the frame, shifting it along the 1/3rd horizon line. For this shot, I zoomed up to about a 60mm equivalent to put the sun at one of the rule of thirds power points, and let the lighthouse slide out toward the edge of the frame. It is such a strong shape that being toward the edge still keep attention on it and keeps the image balanced.
Sony DSC H50. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto with exposure biased for the sky by tipping the camera using exposure lock.
Fill Light in Lightroom to bring up the foreground. Some Recovery for the highlights, added Clarity and Vibrance (which deepened the blue and brought up the orange), and used the Sharpen Landscape preset.
All in all, a fitting salute to the new year!
The image is from the Sanibel and Everglades Gallery.