I’ve been working on capturing the early morning light with my camera. Technically, it is not an easy thing to do. This was taken about 30 minutes after sunrise, as the sunlight started to filter through the trees. The golden light was absolutely beautiful.
To take a picture like this, you have to find the right balance of light. Our eyes don’t notice that there is a huge range of light between the blue sky, the sunlit trees, and the deep shadows around them. If you take a picture with automatic exposure, the shaded part of the trees will be fully lit like the middle of the day, the sunlit portions will be washed out, and the sky will be white. By underexposing the shot, the colors become more accurate. You don’t want to underexpose too much, though, or you will lose the details in the shaded portions of the picture. I always check the histogram after I take a picture to see if everything is within the camera sensor’s range, and adjust the exposure as needed. Sometimes the range of light is just too big, and you have to settle for a loss of some information either on the high or low end of the spectrum.
It’s still a work in progress. In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy my early morning walks with the magical golden light.