Behind The Scenes - "Menehune At Dawn"
In sharing more about my work recently, a few questions popped up about the color of light in a few of the photos.
One of the most rewarding aspects of nature and landscape photography is the insane variety of environmental conditions on any given day at a location. Combinations of cloud cover, time of day, time of year, humidity, precipitation, haze, relative illumination of the subject, and various other factors play a role in the quality of the light and the final look of the image.
Most landscape photographers will tell you that the magic tends to happen right around sunrise and sunset when the light is soft, and most "colorful". Winds tend to be calm at those times of the day, which also adds to a sense of tranquility in photographed bodies of water.
For "Menehune at Dawn", I wanted to try to capture at sunrise, a location that's typically a sunset shot. I've been to this spot many times and have made a number of sunset photos - I've just not yet captured the one.
So off I went to capture the sunrise. As fate would have it, "Menehune at Dawn" turned out to be the one!
As I arrived on location the sun was about to rise a rain shower was still passing. The overhead cloud cover provided a perfect soft box to diffuse and even out the light on the valley and fishpond, and give the purple and blue casts to the sky above. A few clicks later I thought I was done...I was wrong!
I waited for the sun to rise to see how things would change. For one, the rain started again as more clouds rolled in. Maybe 25 minutes later, the sun was high enough in the sky to break over the mountains at my back, and the clouds parted just enough to allow a thick blade of light to course across the valley from east to west along the riverbanks and ridgeline. By then, the color temperature had warmed up considerably, bathing the valley in yellows and oranges. Even the clouds took on an entirely different orange-magenta glow!
Here's the moral of the story - chase the light, see the color temperatures, and most of all be patient. Wait around to see what happens next - often, nothing special will, but every now and then, you'll get a keeper. That morning, I got two when I was hoping just to see what this location offered at sunrise.
Enjoy Menehune at Dawn and Blade of Light.
In the meantime, I'll be chasing the one here at sunset - stay tuned!