Flint Hills Sunrise
The golden hour in the Flint Hills. This is southeast of Cassoday, and you can barely see Teter Rock at the top of the hill straight above the first fence post from the left.
Revisiting the pictures that I asked for help choosing between last week. First off, thanks everyone for giving a vote on which one you prefer. I hope you enjoyed the exercise and I got some good feedback.
This was Picture 2, which was my first choice to print last year.
For those of you who chose picture 2, that was my first choice and the one that I had printed last fall. Unfortunately the bright sun absolutely overpowered everything and it was a very disappointing result. I still really like the picture, and the one that you saw to vote on was the reworked version that I just sent to printer to see if I got it right this time. I’m having my doubts. I have a feeling I will have to take all of these pictures into Photoshop to mellow out that big fiery ball. I’ve done all that Lightroom will allow.
This was Picture 1, which I had not even given a second look last year.
For those of you who chose Picture 1, I had not even developed that last summer when I was going through the shots. Not sure why, because I really like that shot now. Since I went through the shoot again and looked at them with a slightly more trained eye than I had last year I identified several others that I really like as well. I just ordered prints of five different ones to see how they look now. I think they will all be a little dark with an overly bright sun…
Right there is what golden hour is all about.
The morning I went for this drive and picture taking session checked off a big bucket list item, but it makes me want to do more. I had just bought a 20mm Nikon lens for taking landscape pictures and this is one of the first times I really put it to the test. That lens is known for making really nice sunbursts and it did indeed make them. I do believe this also marked a point where I stopped just taking tons of random pictures and got more serious about getting the right composition in the frame. I was out for several hours and only took 108 pictures. The year before I probably would have come back with more like a thousand pictures. I doubt I would have had any more keepers than what I ended up with this time. The eight pictures on this blog are the keepers from my morning last year.
On Teter Hill, looking to the east.
Another reason this set of pictures makes me want to go back out there again is with another year of experience and additional learning I think I might be able to get even better images, at least better exposure on the ones I take. Soon…I am actually going to do some photography this week! Woohoo!!
On Teter Hill, looking to the east southeast. I got a laugh today when I looked at the detail on this picture and realized that is a herd of horses on the right side. I thought they were cows…which shows how much attention I paid to them.
