Another Very Early Photoshoot

On Saturday evening, I checked the morning forecast. When I saw that there would be a mixture of cloud and sun around sunrise, I was so tempted that I set the alarm on my watch for 4 o'clock.

One trouble with summer photography is that the sun rises so doggone early and sets quite late. I wanted to be to my location at least a half hour before the actual rising. Mostly, I find it preferable to take photos before the actual sunrise, for that is when you may be very lucky.

Fortunately, I was only travelling a few minutes from home. I was hoping for some good sky effects over a nearby pond.

Before I reached the pond, I saw a very appealing sight. One of the planets (I am told it was Venus), could be seen fairly close to the crescent moon. The sky was blue above but orange below and along the highway and its lights.

I composed as best I could and squeezed the shutter at 4:43, about 35 minutes before the rising. You can barely see the Venus, especially at this resolution, but I love this serendipitous image. 

(If you wish to seen Venus better, this link will take your computer to my higher resolution Flickr version of this photo. You can then press Z to zoom to full screen. Then, you can also press next or hit the ← to go forward to see the second image. But you need to press the space bar to get out of zoom mode first.)

By the time that I shifted over to the pond, peak sky effects were gone, but this result is pretty good too. You can see how much lighter it was 12 minutes later, even though it would still be 20 minutes before sunrise.

I think it was worth missing another hour or two of sleep.