Sunrise was about 5:45am, so I was up at 4:15am (ugh) to support of another dawn photography lesson:

Lesson #3 – arrive 30 minutes early so you can set up

I was surprised to find out there were no rangers at the park entrance – it was an honor system that early in the morning. I’m very glad I took the time to make the drive yesterday – the sharp turns in the dark and being careful to scan for wildlife took my full attention.

It’s only a five-minute walk from the parking lot to the watchtower and I was exactly on time. There was only one other person there. Then I realized I left my color calibration card in the car. Sheesh. But I was still able to set up my tripod and capture some early color.

The early clouds had multiple levels, so I had high hopes.

Now and then I turned around and took a picture of the watchtower. I repeated this all during the morning, but I did not see any real change.

The following two pictures show how using different color profiles in Light Room drastically change the output. The first one is using the profile based on the calibration card, where the second is using a generic profile that comes with the software.

With both pictures I used Light Room’s “Automatic” editor – starting with a different profile really changes the result. Another lesson learned.

Here, the “god rays” are breaking thru as the sun moves behind the clouds.

And this is my favorite sky shot of the trip. Unfortunately the landscape is dark – I may mess with masks and see what I can do about that.

This was followed by my favorite whole picture. The combination of cloud types really adds to the growing light.

I finished the morning by facing away from the dawn and taking some pictures as the shadows moved against the canyon as the sun rose.

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This was an excellent morning – lots of stuff learned. I don’t know how often I want to get up at stupid-early-o’clock to learn such lessons, but it’s only two days and I specifically wanted to test at this hour. Tomorrow morning I will take calibration pictures more often and see how that helps the photos. But first there is sunset at Mather Point.