Saturday morning, without planning it, and with no alarm to get me moving, I woke up at 5 am.
Ugh.
However I was awake, so I thought I'd make the most of it. I grabbed my camera gear and headed down to the lake to catch the sunrise.
Unlike the last time I intentionally tried to do this, I actually beat the sun, with a few minutes to spare, allowing me to get some wonderful early morning shots without fighting the high contrast of having the sun in the photo. The mist was heavy on the middle of the lake; it had cooled down significantly overnight. I love making pictures with the mist at dawn. Everything seems so magical.
The first three in the series are all 2-frame HDR images, merged and tweaked in Lightroom. Lower down in the series are a few images I captured after sunrise, using my iPhone.
A nice, tight shot of the far shore. Love how the mist and trees blend together, and the golden reflection on the water.
When the sun finally peaked over the horizon, it moved pretty darned fast! I had time for a couple compostions before the sun became just too overpowering.
The sun was just up over the trees, and the mist was already burning off the lake. By excluding that big ball of fire from the shot, I was able to get workable exposre that looks like the water and mist are on fire. Minutes later, the mist was gone.
iPhone images
I'm always amazed at what my little iPhone 5 (not even a SIX!) can do as a camera. With the exception of the first image, these shots were processed in Lightroom, rather than Aviary or Instagram.
Photographed on my iPhone, then processed in Aviary, a free mobile app owned by Adobe and available on both iOS and Android. Aviary is a full-featured image editing app for mobile. While there are certain things it does NOT do when compared to Photoshop Mix, it also does many things that PS Mix does not do. They are a good complement to each other.
The original, unprocess image. All the building blocks are there.
Morning view of the lakeside cottages.
Using a negative Clarity, Vibrance and targeted Saturation adjustments (positive and negative, depending on the image), I was able to take these basic record shots from my phone and make them a little more special.
