Up at 4AM and out of the Sportsmobile by 4:45AM, we arrived at Smith Lake in the Flat Tops Wilderness about 30 minutes prior to sunrise. I found the place that I had scouted the previous day and set up, taking a few test shots, while waiting for the sunrise.
The light was good, but it was breezy enough that the lake surface was rippling, so no glassy, mirror like reflections were possible. I also had to go to 2500 ISO and F/8 to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the vegetation motion. The high ISO resulted in more noise in the photos, requiring attenuation in post processing.
I used 3 basic compositions, shooting multiple shots of each, as the sunrise light illuminated the mountainside on the far side of the lake. Two of the resulting shots are presented here.
Note that the second image above is made with a slow shutter speed (2.5s), which smoothed the water, but the vegetation may not be really sharp due to some wind motion.
I noted that the light on the mountainside might actually be best prior to sunrise, probably due to the sun already being up fairly high before the mountain received the sunrise light.
After this morning’s shoot, we broke camp and headed to Vaughan Lake Campground, so stay tuned for photos from that area.
Ken