Don't make this HUGE MISTAKE when photographing SUNRISES

morning everybody fantastic to see you all again so a few days ago there was an epic sunrise and there was some epic conditions but i made such a big mistake and what i want to do is tell you a little bit about it why i made it and then how you can rectify it because it's a simple thing and it makes a really big difference to when you're shooting sunrises so first of all let's go back a couple of days to the end of a storm that came through the uk and what were the most amazing snow conditions i've ever seen near where i live [Music] morning everybody and fantastic to see you all again in this amazing um winter wonderland we've got here in in england at the moment so i've come here to photograph sunrise at a location that i think could be quite spectacular but i'm a little bit late so i've got a rush um coffee is most important chocolate bar okay let's go okay so i've got this epic sunrise here i'm just too late i'm too late big big mistake right anyway i've got a little bit of composition here with this wall um so i'm gonna put a wider angle lens on i'm gonna take the shot and then i'm gonna come back and explain a little bit more about it but oh my god the sky's epic i'm gonna have to take the shot now i'll see if i can put you somewhere so you can see me a little bit closer here we go all right those trees i'm just gonna move out and go into landscape yeah so right what i've got here is you can probably just see that i've got this scene over here um and what i'm trying to do is it's just um i'm not talking very well this is the worst video ever so i'm trying to just get a line down to there and then i want some that distance in there because i think that it's pretty nice over there there's a little bit of mist um yeah this looks really really good right i've got to take the photo just forget about the video at the moment [Music] just kind of a little bit further open i think i found something and it's one thing that you can easily miss if you just walk walk past it so if you just look down here i'll just edge you down a little bit there you can see that there's just this small little bit of you have to be careful walking here it's so slippery with the smoke this smaller element of curvature with perfect snow i feel like that down there is what creates such a a nice foreground i think i might be just a little bit late for the best light such a shame but um it's still pretty good and um yeah i've got my wide-angle lens on and i'm just gonna stick with this composition i think and now and maybe fly my drone a little bit because if i rush around anymore i think i'll just be shooting lots of different things and not find something that's spot-on really i should have got here at least half an hour earlier big mistake big mistake anyway still beautiful [Music] i found another little spot down here which is got it's quite deep snow i've had to come through to sort of wade in there's a bit of a drift on the wall here and um then there's this tree at the end you can see so this wall drift i've got reasonably close to probably not as close as the other images you can see that it just looks amazing and yeah i'm just being the only thing i don't like about it really is that the tree's sort of crossing that horizon in in the distance and um there's nothing to do about that though i feel like if this light just came out it might just help the situation a little bit but um yeah there's not a lot i can do about that which is a shame but that's what it is and it doesn't get better than this so okay so that was the um world's shortest um landscape photography vlog so i messed up big time i should have got here way way earlier the thing is in conditions like this where you're usually trying to use the reflected light on the snow you want to get here at least probably you want to be in position 45 minutes so composition set up 45 minutes so you need to get giving yourself half an hour 45 minutes to hike you probably need to be arriving you know about half one and a half hours before if you've got a 45 minute hike and i arrived 30 minutes before which wasn't good i was just speaking to a fellow photographer actually and he said the same so it wasn't just me [Music] okay morning everyone again and um yeah i'm much earlier this morning so i've got a hike of about 50 minutes and it's two hours before sunrise so i'm hoping that i'll get there with at least probably 45 minutes maybe an hour before sunrise so i'm much better prepared than i was two days ago the problem is the wind is howling so might not be much talking on this vlog we'll see how we go but it is quite brutal weather i think um so i've got waterproofs um and always take extra clothes i've got some over pants as well pretty well prepared i think um i've got my satellite phone as well just in case anything goes wrong right i think that's everything get the keys let's go [Music] so a lot of people speak to me about hiking in the dark and how one is it dangerous or um scary or whatever it's a bit scary and when you're on your own in the dark there's no doubt about it but i don't think it's too dangerous because you've got a really bright head torch which is illuminating me at the moment i've taken off my head so he can see me um and if you have a good map and you can follow your route or you've been there before then i think it's fine so walking and hiking is always dangerous you could stumble you could trip you might be on your own but i feel like if you do in the morning it's probably safer than you do in the evening because obviously it's going to get light fairly quickly so that's why i like doing it in the morning right i'll speak to you when i'm halfway up i'm at the bottom at the moment still i've gone about half a mile so i need to get going get my head torched and get further up there oh my word this is hard i'm going quite quick so it's about an hour and 30 minutes till sunrise and you feel the wind a little bit now i think as i get over this next brow it's going to be all break loose you can see there's a bit of clearing there the sun is going to rise from over there down the valley ah this just days like this it'll be fantastic right i've got about another 150 meters of ascent i reckon about 30 minutes oh the wind's getting up but um i think there's definitely going to be a little bit of a gap i'm a little bit worried about my tripod i've got my legs so it's pointing um so parallel with the wind the the lead leg which is still not safe but a better way of putting your tripod because it can't pivot as easily over that leg um so i've got my back hung on it the moon's out i can see grasmere over there it's just going to get windier and windier ah god i love this this is amazing doesn't get better to ever get better than things like this oh it's windy now right it's going to get back to the wind okay so you can see the two sort of tops up there so i've got here an hour to spare so it's still pretty dark i've now just got to find somewhere a bit sheltered and then just watch the light i know a composition that i'm going to take here hopefully but um unfortunately there's a slight band of cloud on the horizon so sunrise is effectively going to be a bit later for me in terms of actual light and just hope that the the wind doesn't blow the clouds any worse oh my god it's getting windy yeah so i'm at the top now and you can see all these jagged rocks it's really spectacular up here um i was hoping for a little bit more atmosphere on the mountains because yesterday when i came up in the morning i'll show you a bit of footage here to a different hill it was really misty and mysterious but i think the wind's blowing it all off unfortunately but it's still good it's still pretty epic it's a question i wanna i wanna shoot the mountains up there it's actually not windy here i've got a bit of shelter so i don't think i'm gonna get that early light ah shame but if i'm not here i've no chance of getting it so i did the hardest thing which is get up get out and hike up the mountain and actually it was fairly easy really it's a small hike right it's time for a coffee oh that's nice and hot [Music] i think the wind might be dropping actually um not sure though doesn't seem quite as windy i might just be in a little bit of a dip sometimes you can get just a little bit of shelter you don't imagine it but yeah it's pretty good okay so i've got an interesting composition here there's this sort of foreground rock here that sort of goes in the opposite direction to those rocks over there it's just still how long is it still half an hour before sunrise so um but there's a tree just coming out of the rocks over there which you can just catch as well it's um it's quite a long exposure it's just a question of lining everything up i've just moved things a little bit so that i can get um the lake just to fit nicely into into the into the scene um and it looks pretty good um i could probably get the moon as well actually if i went vertically so i might try to go vertically as well see if i can get the moon and um all the clouds are lighting up behind me there as well so it's starting to kick off but i've got time that's the thing i've got time i'm not rushing not rushing at all [Music] okay so i've got um my 24 to 70 lens on here and basically i am shooting directly into where the sun dries in so there's a huge amount of dynamic range if you just have a look if i just switch this on and record this you can see that i've just increased the brightness here but you can see that i've got these rocks down here um and then going through to this hill and then this little tree over there and then the lake here and then the sun set over there but if i just um i just dropped the iso you can see that i need to drop it quite a long way before i start to get the light in the in this in the sky there this is going to be um my imagination for this in terms of how i'm going to edit it is it's going to be um quite dark in the foreground um because i don't want to brighten up too much i've got this sort of feeling of you know this just pre sunrise shot with a little bit of light hitting the rocks and um yeah i think i think it looked really good i'm quite excited about it it's so hard in this wind um i think the light over on these hill hills and these clouds over here are pretty good as well [Music] so you can see over here that um there's a a town over there with a river running down it i was hoping for the light to sort of come through but it's just it's just getting covered the light over there is just disappearing because the clouds are covering it unfortunately but i was hoping for the light to come hit all these mountains here and create some beautiful textures in the mountains this side light the mountain i don't think that's going to happen but it doesn't really matter i'll still be able to find something i've got that shot and i'm just going to walk along here now and see what i can get further down further down there it's actually a tiny bit of snow on top of the mountains but i think it's going to snow more tonight as well so um yeah that's pretty good [Music] okay so i've just shot this scene here you can see the rocks in the foreground and then the background rocks and the gorgeous sort of valley there the light's not ideal there's no doubt about it um but i'm just using the textures and the shapes to try and shoot it and the thing that to remember is when you're shooting something like this and such wind is you're going to have long exposures in the morning even though it looks quite bright to the eye um and you know i was shooting at four or five second exposures so i've got my bag hung on my tripod just quite try and create a heavier um stability to the tripod and then i'm also shooting it iso 64 and i said 400 and i say 800 so that at least i'm gonna have a sharp shot um you know it might be a slightly noisy one but i'm just sort of edging my bets really i don't want to go back and then see that all my six iso 64 shots have got a slight bit of movement in them because even if i inspect them on the back of the camera i can't see perfectly until i get back into lightroom but it's so rugged up here so so beautiful yeah just the movement of the clouds over there is just beautiful ah just love it so good [Music] okay it's about 20 minutes after sunrise and i think there's starting to be a little bit of action over here um so i'm going back to the first shot i did pre sunrise and i'm going to try and get it again because i think the light it's a little bit better now it's just gonna find where i was now oh it's looking good over there okay so it's getting interesting now you can probably see in fact the clouds are coming right in over there we're getting some sort of rain clouds coming over so we've got dark clouds got this beautiful sort of golden horizon no light on this foreground but the light is actually quite nice it's got sort of a warm tone to it always pay attention to how the light changes and just gets reflected off things but i think it's got a warm tone to it so these rocks in the foreground look quite good we've got these rocks we've got the water that's in quite a lot of rain cloud now so it's looking quite dark and then this golden horizon i've got a bracket and focus stack so it's a little bit of a tricky shot but i'm doing f11 and um taking three shots for focus and three shots for exposure so that's nine shots in total and i'll stick them all together and light the room [Music] still no light on the foreground which is such a shame but i found this little scene here these grasses i was just walking past through these grasses and i thought these would make a good shot and i was looking in that direction because this is where what's called the lion and the lamb is this big rock formation but by looking just in the other direction then you can just get such amazing things so this grass just sets off the foreground you know it's not too complicated your eye can lead into the scene you lead into them to these two rocks either side and then through the scene to the um lock the sort of lock the the tarn in the background and then the water coming out of it what's really good is the clouds have improved the clouds have got a nice color to them a nice shape to them so i'm just waiting to get sort of the perfect clouds above it because that'll sort of help the composition don't just take the shot and think i've got it wait for you know some good clouds to come through so i'll go back wait for those clouds and you'll see the image and then i think i'm going to go down because i don't think we're going to get any light i think the clouds are just continuing to come over um but it is i've been up now actually i'll probably stay for a bit longer it's an hour after sunrise yeah i'll say for another hour i think [Music] i'm just on my way down now i thought i'd just say that that was just amazing okay i didn't get the light but i was there i was prepared i had loads of time i felt much more relaxed about it actually if i hadn't got the light i think i would have you know got a good shot but compared to the morning before where it was rushed i just found one lucky composition but if i'd have just been prepared that morning before i'd have got something super super special i'm not saying it wasn't a great shot i was really pleased with it but i felt like i didn't get the most out of that i made those amazing conditions so you know the moral the story is just get up an extra hour earlier basically or go out an extra hour early in the evening stop hitting that snooze button okay i think i'm going to take a picture of this tree with a background probably zoomed in a little bit i won't take the sky i'll leave you with that photo that's it for this week's video i hope you've enjoyed it there's two contrasting um sunrises one was great but i didn't get there early enough one wasn't so great but i was prepared just need to combine those and i'll nail it thanks ever so much for watching and until next sunday bye [Music] you

Channel: Nigel Danson

Views: 57,725

Keywords: photography, on location, photography vlog, photography tips, sunrise, sunrise photography, nigel danson, Nigel Danson photography

Id: WwArWjdqbc0

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021