PHOTOGRAPHING SUNRISES

THE hardest part photographing sunrises is the need to get up early – very early. and without a subject such as a dead tree, windmill etc, sunrise photos are nothing more than colour and unlikely to end up hanging on your wall. Lake Lonsdale, 20km north of Halls Gap, is dotted with large dead trees that made ideal subjects for a very spectacular sunrise. The part of the horizon where the sun is rising will be very bright, while the rest of the sky can still be quite dark. Ideally, set the camera to manual mode with ISO of 100, aperture of f11 (for the sharpest focus) and exposure taken from a bright (but not the brightest) area of sky. Shutter speed is likely to be half a second or longer, so if you don’t have a tripod, increase ISO and aperture to raise the shutter speed to about 1/60th of a second, enabling you to hand-hold the camera. Check each image to make sure none of the sky is ‘blown out’ and adjust settings accordingly. A sunrise is at its most colourful for less than a minute, just before the sun breaks over the horizon – so take plenty of shots or risk missing the moment.