Saturday, December 11, 2010

Sunrise at Rochester Ky, and More Heron





My buddy, the blue heron. Lucky for me, he seems to like breakfast and dinner (morning and evening). He caught a fish while I was here but my shutter speeds were WWWAAAAAYYYY to slow to catch that, I got to see it though.


(Above) A big splash with a little sunlight thrown in.




It was surprisingly warm this morning. I was up early, so I thought I would try to make it to Rochester (a little over 30 minutes away) before sunrise. I knew roughly where the sun was to rise - over the falls from the vantage point I have been shooting from.

I got my sneakers, and the knees and rear of my jeans wet from trying to get the camera down as low as I could without dunking it. Didn't bring my boots. Glad it wasn't cold.

I have some inconsistencies in my white balance. I shoot raw, so white balance is pretty much up to me. It was pretty yellow early, and I was there several hours so the later shots will not be as yellow. I think the colder white balance is more pleasing on some, but actually the wet rocks were pretty yellow. I will be taking another look and maybe re-post.

I went a little crazy with uploading and posting. I could tell that each consecutive shot had vastly different water patterns. He wasn't moving around a lot except when he caught the fish so I just kept hitting the remote. I still have over 100 shots after deleting all motion blur and unpleasing water pattern shots. The close ups are at 400mm, with very small aperatures (f22 and higher, to keep the stringy water in focus and slow down shutter speed). The stringy water shots are at 1/3, to 1/2 second.