In October 2024, on the north shore of Montreal's Island, I captured an amazing-colored sky at sunset time.

One morning in mid-November, I got up very early. Once again, I went on my computer to see where sunrise would occur that morning. Using the Photographer's Ephemeris and Google Map applications, it showed that Bellerive Park, located on the island's south side, would be a good location to capture the sunrise at 6:54 am. This park is a 17-minute drive from home.

I dressed up and headed to the park. I was on the St-Laurence River Shoreline at 6:15 am.

I installed my tripod, camera, wide-angle lens and cable release. I also installed my 10-stop ND filter for long exposures.

I envisioned a long exposure to smooth any wind ripples on the water's surface, increase reflections, and augment the impact of the clouds. At 6:40 am, the sky was amazingly colored, I triggered the shutter. As always, I used the Live Time feature on my Olympus camera to achieve a perfect histogram (ETTR). It took 83 seconds.

Contemplating the scene during the long exposure, once again, I was glad for all the efforts I had made to get familiar with my gear and the planning done on my computer to find good locations within a 20-minute drive from home!

Later, in post-production in Lightroom, I created a sky mask and performed a dehaze set at +15. I duplicated and inverted this mask and put the shadows to +100. Then, I pressed the AUTO button in LR to let the software perform all the other adjustments automatically. Once again, I did not manipulate the colors!

Did you find your spots in your close vicinity to play with your camera and Mother Nature?