I took this photograph on May 9th at 5:35 am in Montreal, Plage de l’Est.
Montreal is a big city. However, I found many places free of visual distractions appropriate for capturing sunrises and sunsets.
Before leaving home, I checked the Photographer’s Ephemeris app to confirm whether the location was appropriate to capture the sunrise, which would occur at 5:30 am. The weather forecasts were not perfect! They said that it would be cloudy. In my mind, I thought that I would be lucky enough to capture the sun between the distant horizon and the lower clouds. This spot is a 17-minute drive from home.
At sunrise time, I was flabbergasted to see the colored clouds above the distant horizon and their reflection on the river. It looked like a pair of lips! Let’s say they are the lips of Mother Nature!
To capture the scene, I wanted to include the shoreline on the left side and the small tree on the distant right side.
At 16mm, my lens was unable to seize the whole scene. This scene was too large. Consequently, I opted to take three overlapping shots to create a panorama. Before pressing the shutter, I worried about the scene’s dynamic range. I didn’t hesitate to set my camera to bracket three shots with 2-stop increments between each shot to capture the scene’s huge dynamic range! In post-processing for the first time, I would do an HDR panorama image in Lightroom.
Using the nine bracketed files, Lightroom created the final HDR panorama file. The results amazed me so much that I had the emotional obligation to hang it on the wall in my living room.
Using the ON1 Resize AI app, I tripled the file size. Doing so, I was able to print this beauty on a 5-foot-wide canvas.
Each time I look at this beauty hanging on the wall, my eyes kiss the scene!
