I’m not a morning person. If you notice, I don’t take many photos of sunrises. That’s because I often go to bed just before the sun rises.
But the day I arrived in Cayo Coco on my last trip to Cuba, I realized that I would have no luck with my original intention of capturing beautiful sunsets; I could see that the sunsets would be dull and unappealing. So I had to regroup and find another solution. The only thing I could think of was very uncomfortable and painful: I would have to wake up early to photograph sunrises.
This is when willpower is forged. By the end of the trip, I managed to set an all-time personal record by waking up to photograph sunrises seven days in a row.
Not surprisingly, I was rewarded for my persistence with some amazing scenes like this one.
Deconstructing Featured Photo
- Camera: Canon 60D
- Lens: Sigma 10-20mm
- Focal Length: 14mm
- Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority (A)
- ISO: 100
- Aperture: F16
- Bracketing: 3 shots (-1, 0, +1)
- Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442
- Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Processing
Lightroom: import, tagging, export to Photoshop HDR Pro
Photoshop: 3 exposures ( -1, 0, +1) used to tone map image, 32-bit tiff image was saved to Lightroom
Lightroom: straightening, cropping, color correction, exported as PSD image
Photoshop: cleaning, sharpening
Photoshop Plugins:
– Topaz Detail was used to enhance details in the middle of the frame
– Topaz DeNoise helped to eliminate noise in the sky and water