At the break of the Dawn.

It has been in my "to try" list for such a long time.  Finally I decided to hop out of the bed well before the sun to capture the beautiful sky, the vibrant colors  and the early morning serenity.

Headed straight to the Shoreline Park, Mountain View to take the sunrise with its reflection on the lake. It was one of the worst planning, since it is on the west side and what was I thinking when I had earlier picturized the picture of a raising sun against the lake?! It just hit my mind when I was all set and leaving the house.

But I consider myself more than lucky, that I found a beautiful full yellow moon and it was setting when I just reached there and mounted my lens.

I did not have enough time to set up the tripod, the moon was too quick - quickly setting behind the mountain. So I shot up the ISO to 400, which made the pictures so very noisy.

Played with several ISOs, which gave me a cheese like yellow moon against a super dark blue sky and a beautiful white moon against a royal blue sky.







The noise is so very evident in the later picture, where the picture has lighter tone of the sky and water.

This time instead of altering the shutter speed, I changed the ISO. Set the shutter speed at 40 and aperture at 5.6 (possible minimum), I kept moving between ISO 200 and 400 which rendered darker night sky and the beautiful break of the dawn blue sky.

Happy with the moon shots. But wait, where do I see the sun? I saw a blend of palette on the other direction and went towards it. Aw! The beautiful pink, orange, purple, blue, yellow and a few other shades which I certainly donot know the name of or describe it.

The dawn was breaking.






Now the sky is been rendered some colors which is beyond description  but where is this BIG sun who rendered it?! Still waiting. And while waiting, a few more clicks just to keep the few minutes moving.









And now the BIG guy arrives.





By this time I was wishing and hoping for a crisp and circle sun instead of it having so much of flare around it like in the one above. Despite adjusting the settings for the nth time, I was not able to get the sun without the flare which made it look like all smudged.





And while I dint want to leave the place, I played some more while hoping for the crispy round sun.






And thought would try a fully AUTO picture while I was waiting ;)



Well, now where is the sun?!

And then ... (back to Manual, donot forget)







I had to climb on a bench nearby to discover a water body which gave a lovely reflection.





The above picture was taken the very next second after the one above that. The above picture was taken in complete auto mode and it was truly this bright when I took the other shots.  It was bright like the mid day and taking in auto mode killed most part of the picture. Where is the lake/bay, the electricity lines, towers and most of all where is the sun?

The settings that I did for the other shots was to pop up the aperture to 11 or 16 or even 22 as it got brighter as the sun came out fully and increase the shutter speed to upto 300, with ISO maintained at the minimal 100.

I have absolutely not done any editing to the above shots except for cropping, only for the sake of composing. I should honestly say, I did not know what else to do to these pictures. I liked to keep Mother Nature untouched atleast here.

I will have to do another post for the pictures that came as a bonus with this shoot - all those miscellaneous shots :) while waiting and while roaming around the park, since this post is already overloaded.