In last week’s post, I described a trip to Orlando Wetlands Park and talked about making do in the face of bad luck.  I grumbled about a locked gate and the plain sunrise.  Well –  Friday the 13th came with a bit more dawn photo fortune.

I went back out yesterday morning to try again and persistence paid off.  Not only was the gate open when I arrived a little after 6am, but the sky was shaping up nicely.

Lake Searcy before dawn (infrared false color, panorama)

I made this first image just a few minutes before dawn.  It’s a handheld 6 shot panorama using my IR modified Olympus E-PL1 that I stitched together in Photoshop.  When I do this, I always try to hold my camera in portrait orientation.  That gives me a lot more pixels in the resulting composite (30+ megapixels in this case).

I stayed around for a while and really enjoyed watching the sunrise develop.   The image below is from about a 1/2 hour later.  This time I didn’t use the IR camera since I wanted a different look.

Lake Searcy sunrise – This was about a half hour after the previous photo.

I like them both, and comparing them with the ones I made last week – I think they’re better.  It’s nice when the sky cooperates!

We can use this to emphasize a photo lesson I’ve mentioned before.  We can’t all live in Yellowstone or Yosemite.  But we all live somewhere and there are pretty places where we live.  Get to know your area and be persistent.  Re-visit locations at different times, on different days, in different seasons, and in different weather.  You’ll get some photos that a visitor will have to be very, very lucky to get.  As Stephen  Stills said:  “Love the one you’re with“.

You can click on the images above to get to larger versions on Flickr. You can also see more of my OWP photos here on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2012, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved