Have you ever thought about planning and gear familiarity?
Recently, my daughter invited me to visit the famous Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal. This monument is located 200 metres above the city and offers a gorgeous view of Montreal. On July 31, sunset was at 8:23 PM, so I told her that we would have to be there by 7:00 PM. One hour would be enough to visit the site; by 8:00 PM, we would be in front of the monument because I wanted to capture the sunset over the city.
That day, the weather forecast called for heavy clouds. In my mind, I could still capture the sun between the low clouds and the distant horizon.
For the gear, I would bring only one camera with my all-purpose 24–200 mm lens: no bag and no tripod. I knew that 24mm would not be wide enough to capture the entire vast scene, so I would have to create a panorama.
At 8:00 PM, I sat on the Oratory steps. The sun was hidden behind the clouds, but when it appeared between the distant clouds and the horizon, it was time to capture the scene.
For the composition, I used a 30 mm focal length to eliminate uninteresting elements from the foreground. I set an f/22 aperture to create a star effect around the sun. Handheld, I captured four overlapping photographs to create a panorama.
Before pressing the shutter, I also considered the scene’s dynamic range. The bright sky contrasted strongly with the darker foreground, so I set the camera to capture three bracketed exposures with two stop intervals for each panorama frame. In total, I captured twelve images, which I later merged in Lightroom to produce a single HDR panorama.
Once again, planning and familiarity with my 10 year old camera, which cost me US$475, paid off.
Humbly, I do not dream of having a more recent camera with more pixels and gadgets!
