Sunrise scenes

Tackling morning light in big mountain landscapes

Look for the light

The night before the shoot we stayed in Llanberis, at the foot of Mount Snowdon. It’s home to two large lakes spanning northwest (Llyn Padarn) and southeast (Llyn Peris) from the village, ideally angled for sunset and sunrise photos during spring and summer.

We got up before first light to get in position, and were hopeful for a colourful sunrise. We had our Nikon DSLR on a tripod and ready to go, but unfortunately the cloud cover spoiled our party. However, by zooming in with a 24-70mm lens we were still able to capture the first beams of sunlight filtering between the peaks.

Panoramic fun

Panoramas are great for including everything the eye can see – here we shot across Llynnau Mymbyr lake towards Capel Curig. Set Manual mode so that the exposure doesn’t change between shots, and shoot a sequence on a tripod, from one side of your scene to the other, overlapping each image by at least 30 percent. Edit one image in Adobe Camera Raw, and sync the settings to the other images so they’re processed consistently. Use Photoshop’s Photomerge tool to blend the images together seamlessly, ticking the Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas box to fill in spaces top and bottom.