Mesa Arch Sunrise

[BarbaraB]

Last year I bought my first SLR - a Nikon D5000 - and in efforts to learn how to use it better, I've given myself to take at least one photo a day. Earlier this month I took a trip to Moab. I had seen photos of the famous Mesa Arch sunrise and was very drawn to them. So, one morning a friend and I left town at 4am to witness this sunrise ourselves. This was my first 'real' attempt at a sunrise shot into the sun and it's an HDR combination of three exposures. I realize I've got a long way to go (and that the sky looks blown), but am looking for honest feedback on how I could improve this image. Just how exactly do photographers get nice, crisp sunrays? How would I have better brought out colour in the sky? Is anyone drawn to those 'towers' in the distance? I found it challenging to take photos of so much orange. I live near the Rockies, so most of my landscapes are grey rock and blue sky.

f25 | 1/4 sec - 1/8 sec | 32mm

More of my daily photos can be viewed here: Barbara B 365

[sinque]

Enjoyed your daily photos.

Karolyn

[milosh]

Here's another recent photo of the Mesa Arch: Mesa Glow | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Maybe you were there together with this photographer. I think I'm not experienced enough in the field to give you 100% correct instructions on how to do this, but you're certainly dealing with a lot of dynamic range in that photo. One way would probably be to take multiple exposures and blend them together in post-processing. You can see from the description on the link I posted that this photographer used two separate exposures as well.

[Krusty79]

A very nice shot. The only negative thing for me is the sky being blown out. Even though you used HDR, you still didn't quite capture the dynamic range in this composition. You might have to take a shot a -3 or -4 to get the sky exposed correctly.

I admire your drive to get up at 4am!