The first morning of any adventure is special, in Africa on the Mara, it’s incredible! There is no doubt you’ve seen a photo of sunrise / sunset with an Umbrella Tree from Africa. Talk about a tried and true tired theme. But when you’ve not taken it, you just gotta do it. At least, that’s how I saw it. Gotta have that one image in the files. So the opportunity presented itself the first morning and click went the camera. But working the situation trying to make it different from what I’d seen was in the back of my mind. So at first, I went wide and centered everything. The clouds are what made the arrangement of elements rather simple. Centered it all. Center it, really, you ask? Hell ya. You’ve probably heard never do that. All I can suggest is look at a lot of photos. You will see some great stuff with the subject dead center.
How’d I get the sun centered with the Umbrella Tree on the horizon? I moved! Yep, I walked and got in a locale where it all lined up. That was pretty simple. And with that basic shot in the can, time to move forward. I was shooting with my favorite Df attached to the 24-120VR which provides lots of flexibility. Now I’m still in Africa so walking wherever I want for the photo has it limits. Nice time to have a zoom attached. As there is only ONE spot to get the centered sun / Umbrella Tree, we cycled shooters through that. So the sun off to the side worked for me but meant not having the Umbrella Tree dead center. No problem … click, click, click. Now you might be thinking that Photoshop is part of this photograph, saturating the color. Nope, that’s simply underexposure in the camera and Cloudy WB. All that was done in Photoshop was remove a bush on the left side of the frame. I wanted that clean horizon line.
Probably just because of who I am, I wanted the same image size as above but everything nice and centered. If you notice, you’ll see the sun is higher. On the equator, that sucker flies up in the sky in the morning! So I got back in the spot and shot with everything centered. It’s about this point in the story someone asks, “Mr. Peterson, which image in your favorite?” Now since I posted all three, you should know I’m only going to post those images I like. If I don’t like them, you ain’t going to ever see them. But if I had to select one of these three, it would be the bottom, that’s the one I like the best. But really more important, it’s that old theme of mine, making the uncommon from the common and in this case, preserving a memory and feeling of that first morning on the Mara. And for Sharon and I, these fit perfectly!