DramaticSunrise Archives - Bliss Photographics

Crack of Dawn Sunrise

Summer sunsets happen early. This one at 5:31AM. The ridge I wanted to work for this had a good view of the crescent moon. Working the crescent moon from 5 AM until it was lost in the haze. Keeping busy with cameras is a good thing. I was loving the roiling distortion around the edge of the solar disk. It’s a result of the atmosphere distorting the shape and the details. The sun is ACTUALLY below the line of sight (below the horizon). The atmosphere is bending it’s image around the corner for a few minutes at the rise.

Jammin….

I have Sirius XM radio plus a reasonable audio system in the Raptor. This has been a good thing up here. I went out doing backcountry photography for years on an open ATV with my cameras in a open basket. No tunes…. I’ve work open ATV’s to -30. Having had cameras literally not work from the cold…. I put 3500 miles on that ATV one year doing backcountry photography only in this area.

Better ride:

This year, I’ve accumulated 1300 miles of only backcountry driving. In the Ford Raptor’s first 6 months. The Raptor is an all weather, all terrain, comfortable photographic studio for me to work from. There are not many places it would not go within reason up in this region if I asked it to. Think of it as a “Free Runner” which is a truck built for racing courses like the Baja 500. So far, it will do anything I ask of it that I’m not afraid to do. 📸 🤘 More hail dents than I like on it though….. ☹️

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Crack of Dawn Sunrise

Most Sunrise with a Banded Sky aren’t usually this dramatic but some ultra high light environments I visit bring a certain amount of intensity to the image. With good equipment you don’t blind yourself looking through an old DSLR (I only use mirrorless cameras and don’t suggest using a DSLR with a direct optic path to your eye to try this. It might be the last thing you do. The new mirrorless cameras handle this and your looking at a video of the scene, not blinding bright light through the viewfinder.

Photomusings:

High shutter speed, High fstop and low ISO for this kind of thing. Manual mode of course. You should go with a high fstop not for the focus it brings but for the light it cuts out. Blinding stuff here. Camera sensitivity (ISO) low and a high shutter speed combined with a high fstop is basically shutting the camera down for light. Picking up dark things like a landscape isn’t going to happen but you could see a sunspot if it were there. Using a standard DSLR camera could blind you for this since there is a direct path of light to your eye. I use only the aforementioned “Mirrorless” cameras (Removable Lens Mirrorless) in my photographic habits of pointing a big light gathering lens directly at the sun. Note that ALL mirrorless cameras are not rated to look directly into the sun without a filter so do your research. They can get spots burnt onto the smaller sensors by the focused light. The Sony Alpha 7 (large sensor) cameras I use have been doing this for well over a year now thousands of time…no spots burnt in anywhere ever…. Please don’t go blind trying to do this if you don’t have a mirrorless camera where your looking at the scene via video. (disclaimer).

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Sunrise With a Banded Sky