Hey everyone! I know I haven’t done a blog in a long time but I am hoping to get back into it again. I thought I would start with this shot as I really like it.
Although it has everything a landscape photographer wants in a a shot my reason for choosing this one is because I managed to predict the sunrise, which is rare for me.
At sunrise, as the sunlight travels through the atmosphere obliquely it travels more than it does when the sun is higher in the sky. The atmosphere scatters the light, but more light from the blue end of the spectrum is disrupted, leaving the longer wavelengths (reds and oranges) to dominate. This is what creates the vibrant colours of a sunrise. Atmospheric conditions like cloud, dust, and even pollution can affect the intensity and colours of the sunrise. In conditions with lots of clouds, the light can’t penetrate, and we don’t see the colours. In clear conditions, there’s nothing for the light to reflect on, and again, we don’t see the scattered light. So, we need clouds, but in the right place to see the full sunrise effect.
I have 11 different weather apps on my phone, and they all give a pretty good prediction of the weather for the next 24 hours, but I still haven’t found an app that gives an accurate prediction of localised cloud.
The night before I took this shot, all the apps were predicting a clear night followed by cloud coming from west to east at dawn. Perfect conditions for getting a colourful sunrise if I could predict where the eastmost edge of the cloud would be as the earth spun towards the sunrise. I made my best guess that it would be somewhere along the River Forth between Edinburgh and Stirling. The Forth generally extends in an east/west direction here. I decided that I needed to be near the M9 (motorway between Edinburgh and Stirling) about an hour before sunrise to see where the edge of the cloud was. From here, I had options to photograph in Edinburgh, Stirling, Linlithgow, Blackness Castle, or at the Forth Bridges.
There are a few great spots to view the Forth Bridges from around the area. They’re close to the motorway and give you a great view of the river, both up and down. I got there early enough to see where the sunrise was already starting to light up the horizon and where the clouds were. It was a no-brainer to head to the beach at Blackness and take some photos of the Three Bridges, about 5 miles up the estuary, silhouetted against the beautiful sunrise.
I took a bunch of shots all along Blackness beach and tried different settings. I ended up with this one because it works well with the rule of thirds, also the line of rock in the foreground and the bands of cloud above frame the bridges perfectly. I used my Nikon Z7ii at 122mm on a Nikon F 70 -200 f2.8 , 100 iso, 1/15th and f8. I intentionally chose f8 to make the foreground a bit softer, while the wading birds in the middle distance and the Bridges themselves are clear and sharp. This adds to the illusion of three dimensions.