Below is information on Port Meadow, in Oxford, followed by some of my essential sunrise shooting tips.
We got up early to catch the sunrise this morning, and blow the cobwebs out with a walk on Port Meadow. These are the first two photos from the ones taken that worked out (17 in all), the rest being trickled up to Flickr and posted here.
Port Meadow is North West of Oxford centre, and while I usually park in the Walton Well Road car park at the southern end, at this time of year there is a lot of flooding, so thanks to advice from friends I found good parking at the north end, which set me nicely up for the sunrise.
View Port meadow in a larger map
From there it was a simple walk down to the bend in the river to wait for the sunrise.
Essentials for early morning shooting:
- Warm clothes and hat (was -5 degrees)
- Waterproofs - often you find yourself kneeling down to frame a shot, and it was pretty muddy, wet and icy.
- Ideally waterproof footwear (sometimes you have to wade a bit to get the shot!), and staying dry and warm meant you are able to stay out a lot longer.
- Preparation, and scouting beforehand - we would have been far more efficient if we had thought about what we wanted to do beforehand, and knew exactly where to park - things don't always look obvious in the dark!
- Hot drink - a flask of something hot to warm you up!
- A tripod - essential for those pre-dawn shots that are several seconds in exposure, and anything in low light.
- Lens cleaning - a small cloth for cleaning your lenses if they mist up.
- A rucksack - essential if you have more than one lens, and a flask - good to keep your hands free.
I use a Canon DSLR, so include some specific setting related information to do with that, but a lot of the more general advice can be applied to a multitude of cameras.
In terms of lenses, I mainly shot with a wide angle (17-40mm) and then a short zoom (24-105mm) for compressed perspective landscape shots and wildlife. Once the sun gets above the horizon, graduated filters are useful for reducing the glare. I used a Cokin ND4 Graduated filter on a wide angle filter holder. I also took along a cheap round polarizing filter for a few shots too, once it got light. (all bought inexpensively from 7dayshop.com and a lot less expensive than some of the filters out there, and works just as well). The wide angle filter holder restricts you to stacking a single filter at a time, but is prone to less vignetting.
In terms of camera settings, if your camera has customisable settings you can set them up to save you time fumbling in the dark. For the morning shoot, as well as the normal AV (Aperture Variable) mode, I used two programmable settings, one set up for taking multiple exposures, and one for wildlife.
I could then switch between AV and the two settings quickly, with a turn of the dial without any fuss (on my Canon). I also found that being able to take two additional shots of the same thing with a stop over/under exposed really useful, as often the underexposed shot had more contrast and detail, and ended up being the one I eventually used.
I shot in AV mode, with aperture set to F11 to ensure the whole picture was in focus and sharp. Focus was set for a single shot, on full RAW size (so I could crop stuff out later, and had a little latitude with white balance), with multiple exposures turned on as needed. I found for multiple exposures, if you lock the mirror up and use live view, set for multiple exposures and use a 2 second timer, there is less vibration from mirror slap (if you ever want to blend exposures in post processing), and the camera takes all three shots with a single shutter press. Less effort, and memory cards are cheap, so why not take lots of shots!
Even if your camera does not have customisable settings, its worth trying to play with the exposure settings, as often the low light of early morning can fool your cameras meter, and sometimes overexpose things.
For wildlife (birds) I set the camera to continuous shooting mode, turned the f-stop to f4 to blur the background, and whacked the ISO up enough to allow me to shoot at 125th of a second. Focus was set to continuous mode. This was mainly used for panning, shooting pictures of flying birds, something that I am trying to improve on. Again if you have customisable settings, set them and save the fiddling around with your camera in the dark.
Turned out that my lens was too short for the majority of bird shots, so in future I would likely go for something longer, like a 300mm if I could get hold of one.
I also found that simple shots of the sunrise didn't have as much impact as ones with a key focal point (like trees), and being mindful of the rule of thirds and the use of leading lines worked really well (as it usually does!).
Shooting wider than you think you need to is useful when it's dark, as it allows you to crop out things in post-production that you didn't spot when originally composing the shot.
Finally - when should you go? Well if you know where you are going, and are reasonably organised, aim to be at your sunrise shooting spot by the start of the golden hour - the time around sunset and sunrise when the light is best. This can be calculated using the aptly named Golden Hour Calculator.
Often I find the actual sunrise is pretty mundane and doesn't lend itself to good photographs, it's the time before it rises and after it rises that are the most spectacular.
Happy shooting!
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