Sandy Hook Sunrise

[Dave Blinder]

Taken recently in New Jersey

I already cloned out several nasty hexagonal solar flares (no lens hood), ran some barrel distortion lens correction, contrast adjustment, small crop from bottom+right, slight CS4 noise reduction for smoothing, and then ran Smart Sharpen.


EFS 18-55, Tripod, manual mode, timer, no filters
Camera Canon EOS 7D
Exposure 0.1 sec (1/10)
Aperture f/22.0
Focal Length 18 mm
ISO Speed 100

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4078/4924033930_0128d984da_b.jpg

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Dave,
Ah.....the Jersey shore......tough place to photograph! I think you did well comp wise.....putting the sun in a good position but the FG is a bit too dark and dominant. You have 2 options....in the field use a split ND filter.....if you were to get just one.....the soft edge 3 stop would be my 1st choice in a 4x6 size so you can HH it in front of the lens. You can also do 2 or more exposures....1 for FG and 1 for sky and blend them......or an alll out HDR and try that. I always find the split the fastest and most time consuming......especially in cases like this w/ a flat horizon. If so inclined....you can make this into a nice vert by eliminating most of the RH side......takes out most of the FG dominaance and leaves all the other beautiful stuff behind! Just some options for you to explore.

[Robert Amoruso]

Dave,

Roman brought up a good point on paring down the FG to less rocks. I was going to suggest that. As I create a lot of images at the shoreline I have found the following strategies work for me.

1) Slower shutter speeds. 20 sec. 30 sec. You will need a Neutral Density Filter (3 stops up to 6 stops) to get that long an exposure. Also the split neutral density filter Roman suggested is a good idea. Reason is to create a soft silky look to the water. Personally, I do not like partially soft like you get in the 1 sec, 2 sec ranges. I either want the water sharp, or very blurred. For sunrises like this, I want the water very soft and silky.

2) Aim the camera down at the in-rushing water and combined with the golden glow and various shutter speeds create some interesting abstracts.

3) Include lots of clouds when they are good.

Where I photograph my beach scenes in Florida, I have no FG elements likes rocks so I use the slow shutter speeds to accentuate the FG at low tides and the patterns created as the waves rush in and out.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Dave, Between Roman and Robert's great advice I don't have much to add except I like the way your thinking. You took a scene and found a foreground,kept the horizon straight and offset the sun. All good compositional elements...