December Sunrise

Just a chilly sunrise in December. Even with dawn being only at 7 AM I've been missing it for a few weeks. It's just so freaking cold crawling out of bed that early is almost painful. Those weeks of extra warm weather in November messed me up good.

Sunrise at Daniel Webster

It would be so much easier to photograph at Daniel Webster if it wasn't 45 mins from my house. I got up at 4 am. The moon looked nice. I startled plenty of deer, up close even. I even spotted two mice. Chicory was just starting to open. The path reflected in this spider web. Two more opening chicory. There were only 4 or so rabbits. (I saw more on my later walk with one of the dogs.) And begging babies rounded out my walk. Then I walked a dog and crashed for 3 more hours of sleep...

Daily Photo - Sunrise

From Sometime Back in February.

Daily Photo - I Saw the Sun

for a little while this morning anyway. It's been raining for 3 days now...everyone else nearby is getting snow.

5 Things I've Learned...

in the last 12 months or so of playing with my camera. 1. Dawn really does have the best light and is worth hauling out of bed for. 2. 250 mm is barely a telephoto if you're chasing birds. It is also irritatingly slow. That same 250 mm has to be stopped down to f/8 to take anything approaching sharp. It also needs to be within about 10 feet and take up at least 1/4 of the view for focus to be less hit or miss. In other words it isn't as useful as it could be.

100% crop

3. Mirror lockup let's you take better long exposures, esp. with a tripod and remote. 4. A dedicated flash is completely worth it to photograph bugs. A ring macro flash might have been better, but I can't bounce that off the ceiling. 5. Keep taking photos until the critter leaves. This isn't film. I don't need to hoard my film, or pay for processing. If I take 100 photos of something so be it. I should easily get 5 I love and 20 use able photos from that type of burst. The ratio should be even better if the critter doesn't move much.

Daily Photo - Sunrise

I would love an unobstructed view of the East. It's this or power lines.

Daily Photo - Sunrise Yesterday

At some point I'm going to remember that it's dark around sunrise and I really should drag the tripod out to help.

Daily Photo - Sunrise 2

This is what you will get for a sunrise if you're too lazy to get up early enough to actually be anywhere interesting at sunrise, and go back to bed while resetting the clock to sunrise.

Daily Photo - Sunrise

Yesterday.