I Made Two New Friends

As promised last Thursday, I went out for sunrise on Saturday. I decided to go back to Rainbow Park to try and capture the sunrise on the Fox River. While I was there, I made two new friends.

Sunrise

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it to. The trail I walked along was very well-lit, so I couldn’t get the color of the sky like I wanted. I am not complaining even a little bit about the lights on the trail. I just didn’t think about them when I was there a few weeks ago.

It also didn’t help that there were too many clouds in the sky, so I probably wouldn’t have gotten as much color as I wanted anyway. So, I came up with a plan b.

Before I could really execute my new plan, I wanted to photograph the trail and capture the whole landscape. I thought that it might look cool to share the natural scenery along with the man-made elements of the street lights. I turned around from my camera, and when I looked up, I saw two deer. Unfortunately, it was too dark to photograph them. I even tried with my phone, but the photo was too pixelated. But I talked to them and may have tried to get close enough to pet them. We weren’t quite good enough of friends yet though.

Plan B

My plan b was to practice with long exposure. It was dark enough outside that I felt like I could have a shutter speed of 1 second or longer, and not worry about it looking too bright. Here are a few of my favorites.

I like that I was able to capture the tiny hint of pink in the reflection of the river in the above photo. I only wish I had angled myself differently to get that house out of the background.

I’m pretty happy with the second photo as well. I’m glad that I was able to capture the pink in the sky in this image. I only wish that it was dark enough to show in the reflection of the water.

After this image, I headed home and that’s when I saw the sun just above the horizon. I was really disappointed, but I was too sleepy and I didn’t feel like stopping again. I had a feeling that by the time I found another location, it would have been too late.

The morning wasn’t a total bust though. I’m glad that I went out since I made two new friends. And now I know that the river isn’t the best sunrise location.