I mentioned to you in my recent blog that one of my goals for 2020 was to get up and take more sunrise photography. This goal came from studying other photos and analysing the work of some of my favourite artists.

It was clear to me how important light is in a good photo. There are all types of light but I personally love the colours which come from sunrise & sunset so I knew if I was going to be intentional about improving my photography I’d need to get up earlier and get out for those sunrise shots.

So, on Blue Monday I ventured back to a familiar location in Tusmore Park. I guess you’ll see me return to a lot of common locations as I share these blogs with you. I expect most photographers often return to the same locations for a couple of reasons. One, they get to really learn the location. They know where the compositions are, it feels comfortable, maybe parking is easy and it’s not too busy. Two, because it’s not always possible to venture hundreds of miles to a location and hence you make use of what’s local to you.

Early Morning. The Moon in conjunction with Mars. F3.5 · 1/2 · 18mm · ISO 500

I arrived early, around 6.45am, still 1hr 15mins to sunrise. There’s a lightness to the sky but I needed a torch to see where I’m walking so my head torch helped me navigate a small woodland track to get to my spot. Both myself and a pheasant had a bit of a shock along that path, he at my presence, me at his panic above my head!

I took a few shots trying to capture the Moon with Mars. It wasn’t easy to get the definition of the Moon, Mars and the landscape ahead of me. In fact, the shot above is probably the closest I got to managing it.

Also, as you can see above, there was a red glow to the sky even at 7.12am so I was confident a nice sunrise was heading my way.

HDR image. F7.1 · 1/25, 1/13 · ISO 500 · 18mm

The morning colours teased me for a little while as they subdued before bursting back as shown in the image above. This image is an HDR merge in Lightroom.

What’s an HDR Merge? You may have heard of a term called Bracketing. It’s a technique used in photography where you take a picture at different exposures and then bring them together in post-process. For example, to create the image above I took two images where all the settings were the same apart from exposure. Therefore I had one image which was bright and one which was dark. Lightroom merges these so you get a more balanced image rather than either the light or dark areas being blown out.

(Disclaimer: Still learning about HDR Merge, there are people who know way more about it but hopefully that helps explain if you don’t know about it).

I love the image above. It’s wide, it shows the morning colour, the naked tree, the moon & the curvature of the clouds.

“Here comes the sun (doo doo doo)”. F7.1 · 1/125 · ISO 500 · 32mm

Sometimes the camera doesn’t do a sunrise justice. Maybe that’s the way it is or maybe it’s where I am in my learning. The colour it created in these clouds was magnificent. I took a few pictures but sat back, poured a coffee and enjoyed it. “What a way to start the week”, I thought.

Unrelated Side Note: The first image I shared in this blog has an aperture of F3.5. I started shooting and didn’t think of the aperture. I still need to slow down before I start taking photos on location. “What aperture, what ISO, what shutter speed, what are you trying to capture here?”.

Pano-tastic. F7.1 · 1/80 · ISO 500 · 34mm

Panoramic images. I watched a video on YouTube recently which spoke about making sure you overlap your images by up to 50% to ensure that you get a good panoramic shot (i.e. so the software can stitch it together correctly), so I tested that out in this shot and was pleased with the outcome.

I’ve tried taking “panos” before and they’d been hit & miss with my DSLR so I’d reverted to the iPhone app. In the shot above I took 5 images working from left to right. Each image from the second onwards started from halfway through the previous shot. When I did the merge in Lightroom they worked well and I was able to cut them up in Photoshop so I could share them on Instagram.

And here is my final shot of the day (pretty much). The sun peaks over the horizon and I use the sunburst effect to capture it in an image I’m really pleased about.

If you’re not familiar with the sunburst effect you’ll notice I use F20. Any high aperture (F16 and up) creates this type of effect and it’s best when the sun is partially masked by an object (such as a tree).

I was so pleased to get a sunrise, it was the perfect way to start a new week. Also, as I write this blog it’s pleasing to think about the different techniques I’ve used to create the images and reminds me to think of what I’ve learned in the last year, rather than concentrate on how much I still want to learn.

My next blog will be about an astrophotography outing the same day, it’s safe to say I was photoed out by the time I got into bed that night! It’ll be up in a few days :-)

Thanks for reading if you got this far :-) I really appreciate it.

Until next time.

Simon.