Behind the image – Sunrise on the Mountain
Come behind the scene and see how one my recent favorite photos was taken.
I do not write enough on my blog, time spent processing my images and planning future shoots, takes up alot of my down time these days. So I thought I would start picking a few images and explain how they came about.
Enjoy my first one below.
Equipment Used:
Nikon D300
Nikon AF-S 17-55mm F2.8 G IF ED Zoom (DX)
Settings:
ISO 100
1/400th
f 10
30mm focal length
Location
The Esses at Mt Panorama, Bathurst, NSW
Time 6:44am
Sunrise and Sunset are really the best times of day to photograph. The light and colour due to the suns position in the sky is just magic.
Travelling to and covering Motorsport events can be a fun part of my job, but it is the thinking outside of the box and looking for those different kinds of shots that makes it fun.
I love Mt Panorama, in Bathurst, it is one of the most photogenic race tracks in Australia.
Whilst attending the Bathurst 12hr race earlier this year, it was decided by me and a fellow photographer colleague to get up before sunrise one morning and head out to the track to catch a sunrise as it fell across the track.
So after a 6am wake up, we headed straight up to the top of the mountain. We parked first at Skyline which is the highest part of the circuit to see how the light looked, we then headed to the Esses the next part of the track and from where this image was taken.
The sun had just risen over the mountain range and was casting a beautiful orange glow over the track. With these fantastic rays of light creating the light beams you see in the photo and down in the valley there is the smallest amount of fog.
The light didn’t stay like this for long so I worked quickly to capture as many images as possible.
The light really was perfect that morning; it looks like I used a graduated filter on the top half of the image but that is just how it was.
Working with raw files over JPG files just really allows you to be able capture the lights dynamic range so much better than a JPG.
Then with just a few tweaks in Adobe Lightroom you have the finished image.
Here is a Instgram photo I took on the day as well, no where near as good as the SLR shot but still not bad.