Sunrise in Mankato

[aadi299]

Hi,

I brought a new SLR recently and I took this picture with the new camera. I waited for the sun to rise and took the photos with aperture priority .

Camera Used: Nikon D3000
lens used: Nikon 55-200mm
ISO: 100
F number: f10

I want to know how i could have improved my shot?
I also want to know what is the best method to photograph sunrise or Sunset?

Cheers
Aadi

[Krusty79]

Nice colors. I would like to see one taken a couple of minutes later when the sun is not obscured at all. You can often get a lot of color in sunrises and sunsets if you underexpose the image.

Ideally, you are using your tripod, shooting RAW and bracketing your shots. That will give you a lot of leeway when processing your images. The easiest shots to take are the kind you have here, where you just expose for the sky. To take it up a notch, you can try adding some foreground interest, but that usually requires exposure blending and/or a graduated neutral density filter to correctly expose the relatively bright sky and darker ground. That's what I had to do in this shot:

[flytyer57]

I think your picture looks fine except for all the black sky. I cropped out some of the sky and this is what I came up with.

Hope you don't mind me copying, editing and posting this pic.