Archive 2016 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

Matt.Dieterich
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

"Awakened"

One of my favorite areas for night photography also turns out to be an incredible spot for watching the sunrise. This view was taken at Dolly Sods in West Virginia on a fall morning in September 2014. After a long night of Milky Way shooting I decided not to pitch my tent but opted to nap in the back of my Subaru. I awoke an hour before dawn to the crisp fall air and took a few more night sky shots before twilight. I will never forget how cool it was sitting on this rock ledge as the tiny sliver of the sun peaked over the mountains and bathed the fog in golden light. Words cannot describe such a cool experience and having grown up my whole life in Pittsburgh, PA I rarely experienced solitude of being alone in nature like on this trip. It has been over a year and a half and I can still remember the amazing feeling of watching this sunrise by myself. I imagine all of you have experienced similar moments while on a photography adventure, which helps keep us connected.

I shot this with my Nikon D800 and 70-200mm. Unfortunately there is a lot of lens flare, which can be distracting but is somewhat interesting to me in this shot. This is my first experience of a wicked landscape with fog and a great sunrise! I am looking forward to improving, so please offer advice.

Thanks,

Matt

"Awakened" - Sunrise at Dolly Sods in West Virginia

Edited on Feb 27, 2016 at 12:18 PM · View previous versions

Feb 27, 2016 at 12:02 PM

another_mikey
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

Matt,

Very nice! As fantastic as all of your recent Milky Way images have been, it is good to see you ALSO taking some shots when the sun is ABOVE the horizon

Feb 27, 2016 at 05:17 PM

Matt.Dieterich
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

another_mikey wrote:
Matt,

Very nice! As fantastic as all of your recent Milky Way images have been, it is good to see you ALSO taking some shots when the sun is ABOVE the horizon

Nice exposure on a very tough dynamic range scene - did you do anything with filters or bracketing to get control the foreground with such a hot horizon? Love the highlights in the foreground leaves, and the lens flare works well too in a shot like this.

Best Regards,

ML

Hi Mike,

Thanks for taking a look and commenting. I forgot to mention that I used a 3 stop ND filter (I believe...darn memory after 2 years ago hah). So I think that is why I got the serious flaring. This was a single shot and really goes to show how great dynamic range is for cameras today. i simply increased the shadows in Photoshop camera raw to bring up the tree line.

How is your 5D SR working

;D

~Matt

Feb 27, 2016 at 05:47 PM

wbrad
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

This is nice! Yeah, shooting into the sun with ND grads can be a problem, it's very hard to clean off all those dust particles without more taking their place. Colour seems a little off to me, with the yellows being a bit strong for my eye. Otherwise, like I said, really nice shot.

Wayne

Feb 27, 2016 at 07:53 PM

Cheryle Sytsma
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

Very nicely captured, Matt...

Feb 28, 2016 at 03:26 PM

Matt.Dieterich
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

wbrad wrote:
This is nice! Yeah, shooting into the sun with ND grads can be a problem, it's very hard to clean off all those dust particles without more taking their place. Colour seems a little off to me, with the yellows being a bit strong for my eye. Otherwise, like I said, really nice shot.

Wayne

I definitely agree Wayne, you should have see how many dust spots were in the sky in this shot I had to clone out! I do not remember if it was from my ND filter, which I keep very clean. I think it was from dust and dirt on my D800 sensor some how because I had issues with that before. I had the sensor cleaned, but still some spots persisted. I will try to tame down the yellow to see how that looks!

Cheers,

Feb 29, 2016 at 07:51 PM

Matt.Dieterich
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia

Cheryle Sytsma wrote:
Very nicely captured, Matt...

Thank you very much Cheryle, I am happy you enjoy the photo =)

Feb 29, 2016 at 07:51 PM


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