Should a sunrise feel like work?

Getting up early has always seemed to me, to be related to “work.” In my dayshift patrol days at the Spokane Police Department, early was always the optimum word…and it was indeed, “work.” So getting up early now, with a chance to have some fun, just seems a bit tedious. Yet, capturing sunrises with a camera has now been added to my list of fun things to do, and slowly but surely, getting up early is eroding the feeling of it always being “work.”

Sunrises can be as dramatic and as colorful as can sunsets. There is one major exception though, and that is “you must point your camera in a totally opposite direction.” All of the other factors for low light imaging are the same, including the use of a stable tripod platform for the timed exposures.

Sunrises have been a pleasant surprise for me in the past couple of weeks. I have been out of Spokane for a couple of weeks, and monitoring sunrises from my location has been very easy to do. Shooting through secure glass windows, well above ground level, has not been that difficult. It can be, if the reflections from the interior glass are also captured in the frames of the landscape you are trying to photograph. So, keeping the interior as dark as the exterior has been a big help in capturing what the camera has seen during some colorful sunrises this past week.

The placement of the camera and tripod also resulted in the capture of a very large rainbow, which seemed to be less than a hundred yards away. The interior glass did filter a little bit more on that series of shots since it was later in the day, and a lot brighter outside. I may add some of these images to the Spokane Night Scenes website, although I am a little reluctant to add out of town shots to a location designed primarily for Spokane Night photographs. We’ll see, in another week or two when I get back into town and into a normal routine once again.

One thing for sure, getting up early and looking at what Mother Nature is offering for the day, has been fruitful for the past week or two. I need to do more of that back in Spokane. Although that may actually seem like “work,” once more….

John