Flat Morning Light

[tameboy]

OK, be gentle, this is the first time I have posted in this part of the forum. This is certainly not my best shot but I have a couple of questions about it so thought it was a good one to post. I got up a dawn on the first day of my skiing trip to climb up and watch the sun come up. I was hoping to get some cracking 'golden hour' shots as the sun rose. Unfortunately I forgot to factor in the fact that because of our mountain location, the sun didn't actually make an appearance until 10am, so I was left having climbed quite a way up a steep hill with nothing but flat morning light. I was about to delete this image, along with all the others I took that morning. On a whim I decided to play about with the levels, contrast and white balance and ended up with this result. I know I have lost a lot of detail in the trees but does the resulting effect of making the sky appear more interesting and the top of the mountain so clear makes up for the loss of detail?

My questions would be
Would I have been better avoiding such an early rise and waiting until sunrise?

Does the loss of detail in the trees detract much from the image. I find it distracting and I wonder if others find the same.



Unfortunately because I edited the RAW image in RawTherapy, the EXIF data hasn't been preserved.

Camera canon 550D
Lens Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM
Aperture: f/8

can't recall ISO / exposure settings - probably between 400-800 ISO and corresponding shutter speed (shot in aperture priority mode)

[Krusty79]

The loss of detail in the trees doesn't bother me. Of course, I haven't seen the original, but I don't think the detail in the trees is overly important. I'm afraid I still don't find the sky that interesting, as I don't see any cool clouds or sunrise colors. So, to answer your question, I would prefer to see this during sunrise when you have more color in the sky.

[EOBeav]

Agreed with Krusty. Plus, you don't have to actually wait until the sun makes an appearance in order to take a good shot. Bring your tripod, and catch some of that nice pre-sunrise golden light.

[SwissJon]

LoL.. Where were you, this mountain's covered in snow.. Not like the ones near me.

Ok, I get up at 6am every morning in order to get a train to work. Since I live in Valais in Switzerland, right in the heart of the alps, you might imagine, I see plenty of pre dawn and dawns over the mountains here. Usually I'm standing at the train station and it's ugly, but I've had a few nice shots.

From the looks of things, you had a lot of high cloud behind the mountain, and you had actually missed the dawn.. It's not everyday we get fabulous colours at dawn, but the days we do, the colours turn up at and around official dawn, which today was about 1 hour before official dawn.. According to my sun calculator, dawn was at 7.37 today, but the colours this morning were already going when I was waiting for the bus at 7:00, and by the time my train arrived at 7.36, the sky looked much like your photo. I think you missed it, if it actually was going to be a colourful event. The high cloud may well have prevented the dawn from being fabulous anyway.

Next time you get the chance, I think you need to get yourself going for about an hour and a half before official dawn, just to be safe.. But if you look up, and can't see any stars, go back to bed.. Thick clouds never make for good dawn here, unless they're broken enough so you can see at least a few stars.

[tameboy]

thanks guys, some great tips there. Unfortunately I was only in the Alps for a week skiing, but these pointers will be useful back home and in future.