I was teaching my 6-day Big Adventure in the Grand Teton Class, and I arrived at this location at Schwabacher's Landing very early. I got set up in the dark while the students were arriving. I was scrambling around, helping them get set up and ready for sunrise.

The pre-dawn blue hour was coming on, and I could tell it was going to be incredible, so I scrambled back to my camera. While I was going through getting my camera settings dialled in, I was calling it out to all of my students. I slid in a two-stop graduated split neutral density filter to balance light and started my first exposure at Aperture Priority f/20 for maximum depth of field. At ISO 100, it gave me a 30-second exposure. I set the white balance to 7500K and clicked the shutter. The image popped up, and I was close. A few minor adjustments were made, and I turned on long exposure noise reduction, then clicked the second shot at 20 seconds.

The light was coming up fast. The exposure ended, and I was excited, but I had to wait another 20 seconds for the noise reduction to do its thing. Bam! I yelled out, Pow Nailed that! Put that in the Bank! I clicked the next exposure and ran off to help the students nail their shots. I only got off three exposures during blue hour.

By the time I made it back to my camera, clouds had rolled in and shrouded the Tetons, hiding them from us. We had a couple of moments while they tried to peak out during sunrise, but nothing came close to the blue hour shots we got. It just shows that it pays to get up extra early if you want the shot!