“I know you like to greet the sun, but how do you capture those great sunrises?” This question hits my inbox a lot. This person went on to say, “I looked at my iPhone and arrived minutes before it said it was time for sunrise, but I missed it!” I get that a lot from photographers, especially when they are going to a locale for the first time. Here’s my formula in calculating the time to avoid missing that glorious sunrise.
If you look at your weather-friendly app and it says that sunrise is at 06:00, understand that is when the sun breaks the horizon in that general area, not the exact location you want to photograph. Take that 06:00 sunrise time and start subtracting from it for your arrival time. First, subtract 30 minutes because it is at least 30 minutes prior to the posted sunrise time that the light comes up and if there are any clouds, they start to get color. This is when you want to be shooting. Then subtract the amount of time it takes you to set up your gear. Then subtract the time it takes you to get from your car to the place you want to shoot. In the photo above, it was a 20-minute walk down into Bryce to get to this spot so an additional 20 minutes was subtracted. Then subtract how long it takes to drive from where you’re staying to the place you need to park. Then subtract how long it takes you to get up, have coffee until you start your car engine to leave. This means being up at 03:45 to make this shot. This is my basic formula to greet the sun with my camera.
Whether it’s a color or B&W image, the color white is simply the most powerful of them all! While it is the most challenging to also control. But by doing so, you can force the viewer of your photograph to look anywhere in your photograph you want them to look first and then over and over again.
At the same time, white is an anchor color to our vision. Our mind’s eye goes out and finds white and from that, it then determines what all the other colors are. The amazing thing is that both of these “white powers” happen without our knowledge or control. But we need control both of these and put the power of white in our corner.
One of the simplest ways to do this is knowing we can make something white, brighter by making elements around it simply darker. In this case, the clouds at the top of the frame and the ground and the bottom of the frame were made darker in post. By association, the mind sees the white and brighter goes to it first and then travels around the frame over and overcoming back to, the white.
This is the kind of mind trivia I’ll be covering in my landscape classes next month on The Landscape Conference. Come and join a passionate group of instructors to learn so much, especially about the how white pulls the eye!
It was so bright, your eyes would light up white even though they were closed tight against the pillow! The walls shock with every clamp and it was, magnificent! It’s monsoon season in SE Arizona and the storms our first day was a great warm-up. It was long after midnight when the skies overhead really opened up, quite spectacular. I love lightning. When I went outside first thing this morning at 05:00 though, there was a funny color to the predawn skies. My first thought was dread that a new wildfire had been lit by the storm that night. Within a few moments though, once I walked out from under the oaks, I saw it was remnants of the thunderstorm bouncing around the first glimpse of the sun. I ran back into the cabin, grabbed the D6 / 8-15Fish, and then ran back out and up the road. The next twenty minutes were per Mother Nature magic. Oh, the skies. Wowzers!
I was sitting there very comfortably reading and watching the evening thunderstorm build outside. The light was getting nicer and nicer and there I sat watching it when the lightbulb went off in my head, “I’m not here just to sit and watch it!” I flew out of my chair, grabbed the D6, and attached the 14-24AFS, and walked out the door with just my flaps on. While I got out, I still wasn’t taking the opportunity laid in my lap seriously. As soon as I got out the door though I saw it just wasn’t just a purdy cloud, it was a magnificent sky! The chase was on.
The sky was ablaze, the wind was whistling and I was in flaps heading up the sage up our hill! The clouds were moving so I moved as fast as I could to a clearing so take in as much as I could. Set to 14mm, I realized I still didn’t have wide enough glass. I then had to decide what part of the explosion would bring home the story. It was an intense, fun, and rewarding fifteen minutes watching Mother Nature put on one helluva show. As I walked back down to house it dawned on me I had already become too complacent and not chasing the photographs as I should be. Yeah, I could blame it on COVID but that wouldn’t be honest. It was I had seen it before, I’d seen it a lot at The Ranch and just assumed I’d see it again. I don’t know, I thought I would shoot it the next time? But I’d not shot it before so why did I think I would the next time? I don’t know who or what kicked my butt but it needed kicking ’cause I would be really sad to have missed that show now that I know what I know. That’s the thought we have to keep in mind. It’s pretty simple though, it’s not why I’m here.
Oriental or Breadseed Poppy captured by D6 / 14-24AFS
Yep, it’s a flower photo on my blog, what the state of Montana officially calls an Opium Poppy and it’s blooming all over the ranch! A native of Turkey and Iran, how it got to the ranch is a mystery. We’ve not mowed a vast majority of the back nine cause we didn’t know all that was growing there. We saw these plants growing and I thought they were some type of thistle. Then the buds started to appear and my mind said opium plants! Na, how could that be. Then today when I was out with our Red Fox, I saw the first blossom to open. I used the marvelous PictureThis app which told me it’s an Oriental Poppy. I grabbed the D6 / 14-24AFS (the blossom is larger than the front element of the 14-24) took some shots and then came into the web to learn more. There I learned it’s the Opium Poppy, legal to let grow and that the state describes it as an “Annual with glabrous and glaucous foliage.” It won’t make a macro photographer out of me, but they are darn purdy!
Church on The Palouse captured by D850 / 24-70f2.8
“Dances with Clouds,” what my good friend Joe McNally called me once. That’s because I turn to the heavens every opportunity I can to get help telling my visual story. Clouds can set the stage, be the background that will make or break your photograph. That is if you take in all the other elements in the frame and incorporate them along with the clouds.
Church on The Palouse captured by Z7 / Z14-30
Here is my favorite little church out on The Palouse. I visit it at least once every time I’m on The Palouse because it is never the same. When there are no clouds, it is a photographic challenge. When there are clouds, the challenge then becomes what I want to say. Look at these two photographs of the same church shot on two different trips. Do you see the one thing that made me change where I stood and the lens I selected? You might be fooled and think it was the clouds but actually, it was the trees! The trees not only changed lenses and location I shot, but also exposure. I went 24-70f2.8 so I could stand down the hill and put the church up on the rise so the spring green of the trees “hold” the church. I used the Z14-30 and stood closer so the bare trees seem to defend the church. While the clouds made it all come together, without the trees, the clouds wouldn’t have made the photo, visa versa as well. So next time when you have clouds in the viewfinder ask yourself, do clouds set the story?
