Sunrise
and sunset are prime time for photography. Light is soft and smooth. At
this time of the year, sunrise is around 5:30am and sunset 8:30pm in our
area. I don’t usually get up that early
for sunrise images unless I am on a photography retreat or on a vacation where we
can have an ideal spot to view the scene. The dramatic rise and set of the sun
from horizon happen in that five to ten minutes window. We need to have our
camera gear more than ready to capture the dramatic moment. It is a luxury to
be able in the right place at right time.
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| Morning Glory |
This
picture was taken early in the morning in the woods. The warm and fuzzy morning
sun just began to embrace the earth and have us drowned in its glory. In this shot, the sunlight was filtered
through trees that created layers of monotone from white, gray to black. It
looks to me that the trees were soaked with light and drunk in soothing pleasure.
In
many cases, I was just passing through somewhere in the car. Camera is not
accessible or it is ready but I am right in the middle of the freeway. If I am fast enough to pull over at an exit,
I may still get a shot if the location is open and angle of view is manageable.
Sometimes, the sun was either up too high or disappeared from horizon by the
time I found a place to stop.
The
lesson taught me to just shoot regardless whenever an opportunity comes up and
not to worry so much about photo quality. If I don’t get a great shot, I at least have
chance to examine the setting of my camera and learned from there what I can do
better next time. I am anxious to
explore and to learn, but I know I cannot give myself too much pressure. I have
to be carefree, take one step at a time.
On a
trip back from a photography event, I was pleasantly tired and anxious to go
home. But when I spotted this post
sunset sky, I was determined that I wanted to get off the next exit. Luckily I was able to find a good angle for
the shot, but it was pretty dark all around. I hand held my camera and bumped ISO
up to 640 to shoot. I could have raised
ISO higher but I was concerned about the details of layers and colors. I also did not remove electric pole and power
lines as I always like them to be in the scene to be more realistic.
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| Sunset (Three Sisters are in the background) |
I
grew up in the city and now become a country folk. Believe or not, I have had
very few experience taking trains. My first experience taking a train by myself
was in Cologne, Germany at my 30’s. When I was young, I was gutsy. I did not
speak German. I had not taken a train before by myself. I only had the address
of a company that I planned to visit and talk business. I remember that I
purchased a ticket and my seating was later claimed by the conductor that it is
first class, and I had to pay him another $20 Dutch Mark (then about US$10).
On a
trip to visit my daughter and grand children in Seattle, I took a train, my
first experience (again) taking a train by myself in US. It was a 6:00am train.
As I recall, sunrise was 6:42 am or so on that day. I found myself a seat on
east side and started to figure out the settings. The train moved fast and the
sky was dark, I definitely needed both shutter speed and ISO to accomplish the
shot. As sun started to shoot out its
orange light from below the horizon, I started to shoot whenever I could find an
open spot.
Train
was moving and there were all kinds of barriers in front of my subject. I must
have fired 30+ shots including when the sun was finally above horizon. Most of the shots were very cluttered because
of the various items existing within the distance, but I got couple OK shots.
Because high ISO was used, some post processing to reduce the noise was
necessary. I was busy selecting better
shots and reducing noise, and I did not realize that there were two suns
hanging high in the sky, two of them. I was stunned and could not figure out
why. My husband is the one, as usual, to come up the logic answer for me.
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| Sunrise |
I
was sitting inside the train by the window. Window is composed of two layers of
glass panels. The sunlight was first hitting inside panel of the window in an angle (from
high to low) and bounced back through outer panel of the glass (from low to
high). My
smart camera has caught both Suns, the reflected one was dimmer and higher than
the real one. Does this make any sense? You
may have better answers. Please feel free to chime in.
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