Sunrise
(11 Feb. 2012, 7:33AM, Lower Seletar Reservoir, Singapore)
| Exposure | 0.05 sec (1/20) |
|---|---|
| Aperture | f/11.0 |
| Focal Length | 17 mm |
| ISO Speed | 100 |
Sunrise photography was not so appealing to me before because of one very important reason. You’ve got to wake up early! I did took sunrise photos before but kind of become discouraged after that because I keep on getting flat photos. The foreground/background is either too bright or too much silhouette or the whole photo is basically just blurred. My problem before is that I’m not getting the proper exposure.
I took the shot above at the Lower Seletar Reservoir, which actually acts as a ”stormwater collection stations to tap the storm runoffs of the surrounding urbanised catchments”….Wikepedia
For me to arrive at the settings above, I did a series of test shots adjusting the shutter speed while keeping the aperture and the ISO fixed. Everytime I took photos nowadays, I will always have in mind if I’m going to use HDR or not but just to be on a safe side, I will always take three bracketed shots (-2EV, 0EV, +2EV). Now, I use them all or not is at least an option I could do with since memory storage is free 
. Another reason is that because the preview from the camera’s LCD display is a bit tricky especially at outdoors where it is sometimes quite difficult to judge how sharp the image is that I just took. I’m sure you are familiar to that feeling after you look at the sun and where you will just see a black spot anywhere you look I had that vision for almost the whole afternoon after taking these shots! Looking directly at the sun for longer period (how long?) is not advisable but you’ll just be actually amazed how fast the sun rises up from the horizon!
For these images, my workflow was Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, plug-ins from Nik Software and back to Lightroom again. The plug-ins from Nik Software are actually amazing and I do intend to write a separate post for that. I’m currently doing a trial for their plug-ins and was impressed with the output so far.
Another shot, taken from the same place but decided to give it a black & white treatment. I still have a few shots that I’m currently processing and will be posting them soon.
This is another shot which I took, this time, at Sembawang Park. The horizon you are looking at is a port in Pasir Gudang, Malaysia.
