With the tight restrictions going on in Sydney at the moment, there’s not too many opportunities to get out and take some pictures. So I’m fortunate enough to live so close to the beautiful Royal National Park in southern Sydney and shot s few pictures of a early morning sunrise during the week on my morning walk.
As great as a sunrise is, they can also be a little tricky to shoot, with low light and focusing making things harder than daytime.
I find the best pictures of a sunrise actually come around 30 minutes before the actual sunrise. More of a dawn time as the colours are a little more softer with the purple hues.
Once the sun comes up and sneaks over the horizon it’s pretty much all over in a few minutes then it turns to daylight. So I find being out and ready to shoot a good 30-40 minutes before sunrise gives you a good amount of time to shoot in the dawn light with the purple and blues then into the reds and orange of the actual sunrise.
All of these pictures were taken in under an hour so if you are out and about early enough you get get quite a variety of differnt shots with different colours in the same location, making it a great use of your time.
So a couple of main keys about sunrise shooting would be
- Be on site around 30-40 minutes before the scheduled sunrise.
- It’s going to pretty dark at dawn so you’d want to have a high ISO of at least 1000 to avoid any camera shake from a low shutter speed.
- Try to find something interesting to shoot through, maybe some trees or anything that adds a bit of interest to the scene.
- Experiment and have some fun with it while you’re there, shooting a great sunrise pic really is a cool way to start your day.
Til next time
Chris
Chasing Light by Chris Lane 