Early Morning Shoot - Eye Bridge and Broadstone

Dawn and dusk are widely regarded as the best times to shoot - when the sun is just below the horizon the sky is filled with colour, with beautiful detail in the clouds, and just above the horizon it casts long shadows and light everything with a golden light.  Unless it's raining, which it usually is in Britain.  So I thought I'd take advantage of the current nice weather we're having at the moment and get out in the freezing cold to take some pictures.

 

I went armed with my 5D2, 17-40 f4L lens, tripod, a remote release and my Lee filter holder with a 0.6 soft ND grad.  I also took 2 coats, gloves and my new wellies which I bought a month or so back specifically for an occasion like this.  The temperature when I left was -2C, brrrrr!

I left the house around 06:10, and the sky was lightening on the horizon, with bands of orange and red fading quickly to deep blue.  From this point, the sky and lighting changes dramatically every few minutes for about 60-90 minutes as the sun rises up over the horizon.  My original plan was to stop at a few places, eventually getting to Eye Bridge (an old favourite location of mine!), but seeing the state of the sky at the time I left I realised I'd probably only have a chance to do one location, so I headed straight for the bridge.

In the car park, I put the camera on the tripod, plugged in the cable release, put on my coats and gloves (it had dropped to -2.5C according to the car thermometer) and headed out to set up on the bridge.  I've taken this shot many times before (inspired by a shot I saw from Mark Bauer), but I love the perspective and it always looks different depending on the lighting.  Besides, the original bridge was torn down in October last year as it was getting quite unsafe, and this is a brand new bridge in the same style:

 Eye Bridge (5D2, 17-40L at 20mm, 10 s at f14)

While still on the bridge, I turned the camera to point down the Stour towards Wimborne.  There is a small wier about 50 metres from the bridge, and it's very peaceful standing up there hearing the water rushing.  For this shot, I got out my ND grad filter - the brightness of the sky was already meaning that without the filter I was ending up with either blown out sky or very dark foreground.  To make the best use of the dynamic range of the camera, you need to darken the sky a little with an ND grad filter.  For this day, I really could have done with a 0.9ND grad (3 stops at the top and clear at the bottom), but I only had a 0.6 (2 stop) with me.

 

 The Stour from Eye Bridge (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 3.2s, f14)

Across the bridge are fields leading out towards the main A31 (which you can't quite see thankfully, otherwise it would somewhat spoil the atmosphere of the shots!). At this time in the morning, with the temperature so low, the grass in the fields was covered in frost and had a beautiful white glow to it.

  

 Towards Wimborne (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 2s, f14)

It's always nice to get some foreground interest in shots, so I set up in front of some tall grasses and took a few shots.  This is quite a challenging shot as it's got a huge depth of field - everything from the grass near the lens to the distant horizon should be in focus.  At this aperture (f14) and 17mm, everything from around 60cm to infinity should be in focus (see DoF Master for an online depth of field calculator and lots of information about DoF).  I had to slightly adjust nature by removing one very close piece of grass, and I used my flash (off the camera in manual mode) to slightly illuminate the  the grass at the front during the exposure otherwise it was a bit too dark:

  

Stour Field (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 1.3s, f14)

In one of the further fields, I noticed a flow of water from flooding that had turned to ice, and set my tripod up with some interesting frosty grass in the foreground of the shot.  This was one point where I was really glad I had the wellies on - I could walk out into the water and set the tripod up without worrying about my shoes!

  

Ice (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 0.5s, f14)

Back on the bridge, I took another shot of the Stour as the sun was coming over the horizon.  You have to make a decision with shots like this, even with the ND grad - do you want detail in the sun and dark foreground (fine for a silhouette shot), or blow the sun out and keep detail everywhere else.  I tried to compromise here, and the recovery feature in Lightroom definitely aids in shots like this (much more so if you shoot RAW), allowing you to pull back some of the overexposure of the sun and bring some detail back.

  

Stour Sunrise (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 0.2s, f14)

With the sun coming up, and back towards the car park, I wanted to capture some of the reflections on the water.  I put the tripod low down on the bank and took this shot:

  

Stour Bank (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 0.5s. f14)

 And zooming in a little further to remove the bank let me capture the sunrise and the reflections in the water as the main focus of this shot:

  

Reflections (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 1/8s, f14)

 Finally, just as I was packing up to get back in the car, I noticed this fence which could be used as a lead in to the sun - I picked the position so the lines of the fence would draw the eye into the sun in the middle of the picture.  The puddle adds a bit of interest in the middle ground, but I would rather the foreground smaller puddle wasn't there, although it does serve to lead the eye in from the other side of the image.

  

Leading to the Sun (5D2, 17-40L, Lee 0.6ND Grad, 1/5s, f16)

On the drive back, I passed a beautiful sight on the road from Julian's Bridge in Wimborne to the A31 roundabout.  Off to the right of the road was a field of sheep, gently lit by the just risen sun with gorgeous golden light, and all the fields and trees were covered in frost.  However, along that road there isn't anywhere to stop easily, and the traffic was building up, so I decided to log that one for another morning!

I came back into Corfe Mullen, and had the idea of taking a few quick silhouette shots through the trees form the wooded area near Hill View.  I didn't bother with the tripod as I more wanted to investigate the possibility of using this area later.  As I got out of the car, the fairly new stone bench that has been placed in this area caught my attention.  Again, with warm morning sunlight, this area looks very tranquil, and the bench provides as nice focus:

  

Roy's Seat (5D2, 17-40L, 1/25s, f8)

Going past the seat, I got into position low down in the trees to take a silhouette shot.  After taking a couple of shots which I wasn't very happy with (the 17-40L doesn't handle direct sunlight very well - you end up with massive amounts of lens flare), a man walked past with his dog off the lead.  I managed to grab a shot just as the dog walked in line with the sun, and capture the long shadow against the ground:

  

Woof (5D2, 17-40L, 1/15s, f10)

A couple more shots show the long shadows from the sun on the ground, cast by the trees:

  

Morning Light (5D2, 17-40L,1/15s, f13)

When taking shots with point light sources (e.g. the sun or streelights at night), if you close the aperture of the lens down (i.e. a larger f number), you create multi-point stars from those lights.  The shot below was taken near to ground level using Live View to capture the sun just peeking over the top of the seat:

  

Sunrise (5D2, 17-40L,1/160s, f16)

Thoughts about morning shoots:

I seem to have got into the habit of writing a Jerry Springer style thought about the post, so I might as well carry on!...

• Make sure you get up early enough.  I was a bit late this morning - I think 20 more minutes would have given me more chance to stop on route and capture other pictures.  Sunrise was at 0651, and I left home around 0610, so you probably should be thinking about getting to your shooting site around 1 hour before sunrise.
• In winter, take more clothes than you need.  Spare socks so you can put on a couple of pairs for wellies, jumpers, coats, etc - it's better to have too much than too little as getting cold can finish a session prematurely.
• The range of light in a dawn scene can be huge - if you've got some ND grad filters then make sure you pack them.  Again it's better to have something you don't use than to not have it and need it.
• It is worth getting up - it might seem like a nightmare when the alarm goes off and you could be spending another hour in bed, but once you're awake, out and seeing the results it makes it worthwhile!