Tag: sunrise

Silhouetted Sunrise

Another stunning sunrise moment at Cadillac Mountain in Maine to warm your day.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about my experience of seeing the very early sunrise from Cadillac Mountain in Maine (The Sun Shall Rise). I’ve never taken so many photos of a single sunrise, so there are lots more to share! We were lucky enough to get a gorgeous day for this event, which provided plenty of opportunities.

Here’s an image that I took a little later than the one in the other post…

Sunrise Silhouette

As the sun was getting higher into the sky, I noticed this couple admiring the amazing view over the water. This immediately gave me the idea for this shot, so I took my tripod and camera to find the right spot. Lucky for me, they were mesmerized and didn’t move!

If I could have posed them, I would prefer them to be a bit close to each other, but beggars…

What I enjoy most about getting shots like this is the sense of scale that we can provide as humans. We’re wanderers within a vast universe. I’m always filled with awe about how much there is to discover and learn about our cosmos, so let’s keep exploring and learning!

The Sun Shall Rise

Winter might have us wrapped in darkness, but there will be a sunrise. A view from Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine.

During the long winter time, we might feel that there is just not enough sun to offset the darkness. For a bit of balance, today’s post is all about sunrise, and a very early one at that. During the summer of 2021, I joined John Slonina for a short tour of Acadia National Park in the great state of Maine. The park is situated on Mount Desert Island, which is the largest island off the coast of Maine. It is an amazing place to visit any time of year. Among the many sights, there is the sunrise view from Cadillac Mountain, which is the earliest sunrise in the country from October 7 to March 6.

Let’s take a look at a sunrise in June…

Cadillac Sunrise

You have to get up really early for the sunrise in June. Getting up at 2:30am, we found our spot on the mountain before 4:00am. I took close to 200 exposures of different phases of the sunrise, ranging from pre-dawn to well past sunrise.

This particular image was captured at 5:50am, as the cloud cover started getting more definition. I will definitely feature more images from this series.

As Winter Moves In

New England’s winter approaches with the photographic opportunities that it provides. An example is this March 2019 shot of Portland Head at sunrise.

Here in New England it is beginning to feel more like winter, as temperatures have dropped by a good margin over the past week and the forecast looks chilly! There won’t be any complaint about it from me, as it is a season that I enjoy with the photographic opportunities that it provides.

You’ve seen some of those captures (Wednesday’s Wintry Wonder) and I think that part of what attracts me to photographing during winter is the sense of solitude that a cold frozen landscape provides. The landscape almost becomes otherworldly in its expression of the environment around us.

Portland Head Sunrise

This image was a late winter shot, as it is from March 7, 2019, but there is not a single hint of springtime weather yet; I still remember the bitter cold of this morning as there was a good breeze and temperatures were well below freezing. This shot was taken at 6 am as part of a series of exposures to try and capture the ever-changing light around dawn.

With the light still in the blue hour period, the snow and lighthouse show the cold while a bit of hope is on the horizon as the sun’s light is beginning to warm up the day.

Reynisfjara Beach

Reynisfjara in the morning

In photography, as in life, we can plan all we like, but that doesn’t guarantee that everything will be just the way we want it. When selecting a location to shoot, taking into account time of day, light conditions and everything else, Mother Nature can always throw a curveball.

And sometimes, you just get lucky…

Reynisfjara Sunrise

The view was simply stunning, providing beautiful reflections and gorgeous shapes! Of course, there was still a bit of a challenge, as shooting into the Sun is not always the easiest thing to do. Despite the bit of blowout from the Sun, I still enjoy this image, as it has a certain mood to it.

This shot came from this year’s February trip to Iceland, and was captured with my Canon EOS R5 using a 15-35mm lens at f/6.3. I used an HDR bracketed sequence to increase the overall dynamic range of this image.

Autumn Livery

Ever-changing, Nature adapts

In New England there are few more sights spectacular than the color of the trees during the Autumn season; during a good year, vibrant red, yellow and orange hues contrast the remaining green leaves and evergreens across the landscape.

Autumn’s Colors

Yoga Tree is no stranger to the changing seasons and is adapting nicely from the vibrant greens of Spring and Summer to Autumn’s more earthly color palette.

This image was taken in October of 2014 with an iPhone 5s (many generations since then!). I did a re-edit of the image in Luminar AI using a template that I developed for some of the Kinderdijk images. Final touch-ups were done in Adobe Photoshop.

Autumnal Gold at Dawn

Gold remains as Autumn persists.

Getting great light early in the morning is always a blessing and leads to beautiful images. Getting a gorgeous cloud cover to go with that light puts a great big smile on my face…

Autumnal Gold at Dawn

Some stubborn leaves remain attached to Yoga Tree on this chilly November morning in 2013; she is getting prepared for Winter’s cold grip and looks striking against a magnificent cloud cover.

The Early Bird…

Sometimes, the early bird gets the shot!

Sunrise and sunsets are always fun to photograph, and for the reason of not having to get up early, I prefer sunsets or winter sunrises. I’m sure that many of you agree that the end of a good night’s sleep includes waking up when you can see the Sun’s warming rays.

On the East coast of the United States, there is one place where capturing the sunrise is almost a ritual, as it boasts being the first point of the continental states to see the sun rise. Cadillac Mountain in Maine sits on Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park. As it rises to 1,530 feet (466 meters), the sunrise view from the top is pretty early…

Watching the Sun rise

This shot was captured about 30 minutes past sunrise, as I caught these sun worshippers admiring the copper orb. The sun rose around 4:46 a.m. on that day, and provided some magic…

First Glimpse

We were the early birds on that June day, as we found a spot around 4 a.m., and it was worth experiencing this bit of magic!

Morning’s Warm Promise

Warmer days are in our future!

The cold of Winter and its short days and long nights might cause our spirits to flag a bit from time to time. At those times, we can count on Mother Nature to cause these spirits to rise up again…

Morning’s Warm Promise

On this particular morning, the cold grip of Winter was trying to hold on a bit longer; looking across the snow-covered fields and seeing the rose-fingered dawn extend her reach across the sky, my heart knew that warmer days lay ahead.

There’s still more of Winter coming in the Northern Hemisphere, which also brings us ever-closer to the first hopeful days of Spring!

Neon Daybreak

As the Neon Day Breaks

One of the fun parts of going through my collection of Yoga Tree images is seeing what ideas are created now, as opposed to how I saw this more than 8 years ago. I’ve made in-roads into organizing this collection of nearly 500 images and found this one inspiring…

Neon Daybreak

As I have more tools in my arsenal than I did back when I captured this image, I happened upon a Luminar AI template that provided a great starting point: Neon Skyline, which is part of the Artistic Collection. Building on this, I forged my own template that worked better for this image and coined it Neon Daybreak.

This image evoked both a sense of hope and a feeling of futurism, which I think is part of what all of us might experience; I can imagine the next generation of flying machines that might one day cross this sky… will they be support vehicles or terminators?

I would love to hear what thoughts come to your mind when you view this image.

Sunrise at Portland Head

A chilly morning, but worth the effort!

In this second post in the Thursday sunrise/sunset series, we experience quite the contrast over last week’s post. Whereas the weather in Bar Harbor in June was rather pleasant, this morning in March of 2019 was a little colder…

A Cold Sunrise at the Lighthouse

For this photoshoot, a number of us hardy souls met at Portland Head lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. On this early March morning the temperature was about 4F at the time of this capture (6:00 am).

I vividly remember wearing several bulky layers to stay warm and wearing my woolen flip-top mittens, so that I could expose my fingers for the shortest possible amount of time. I was happy that there was barely the lightest breeze, as any significant wind would have been brutal.

At this location, I took my first pre-dawn shots at 5:32 am and the last ones at 6:44 am; for each I took a series of 3 exposure-bracketed shots, so that I could process them for HDR. This series centered at ISO 320 F/10 and 1/60s using a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with a Canon EF 17-40mm F/4L USM lens.

Processing for HDR was done using Skylum’s Luminar Neo; I then made use of a template that I have created for Skylum’s Luminar AI software for color adjustments and structure; after that I used Adobe Photoshop to add a bit of soft light, contrast, final crop and text.