The BBC weather forecast suggested mist and -2°C temperatures and a sunrise at 8.06am. I thought that would make a nice shot, maybe not the rising sun, but a bit of mystery from the mist and some frost would make a decent shot. I was to be disappointed.
I was up (rather surprisingly) at 7:15. A quick look out of the window didn’t tell me much as it was still dark. I got my gear on, grabbed my camera and tripod and made my way to Doctors Pond in Great Dunmow (a substantial trip of some 20 yards from my front door). There was no mist, no frost and no sky, just an unremitting flat grey cloud covering. This was not the shot I really wamted, but beggars can’t be chooses, I’d got up so I was taking the shot.
You may think the sky looks OK in the final image, and it does. It wasn’t the sky that was there though. I’ve substituted the flat grey sky with an old sky of mine using the rather fantastic replacement sky feature in Photoshop. This is how it actually looked:
Whilst the weather was a bit of a disappointment, it was good to be out and about with the camera again with a specific purpose. I’m certainly rusty using the Nikon D800, it took a while to remember how to set the auto timer to avoid any shake on the shots taken. In the end I’ve gone with a pano of the pond to get a wider angle of view than I would have got using the standard 24-70mm lens.
I’ve had a look back in the archives and see I took a similar shot (stepping towards the willow tree) when there really was a rather nice sunrise. I’ve had a go at reprocessing the shot and this is how it came out:
What a difference a little less cloud cover makes! You can see my post of Doctors Pond from 01/01/2014 by clicking here
