Photography is best in the early morning light.

Dawn is without any doubt the best time for photography for a number of reasons but mainly because this is the time of day when the light is at it’s softest. Light is the nemesis of the photographer, too harsh in the daytime, but at dawn it is a wonderful light and always a little different each morning.

Sometimes nature photography can be a pleasure and a surprise and you maybe get a light morning mist to soften a golden sunrise as shown in the photo below, this is taken at Lake Harmon in the Everglades.

Sometimes the light is a soft gold and sometimes it is a soft violet these beautiful mornings are rare indeed, but in order to get the good ones you have to be out there for them all, unless you are very lucky. But dawn is a beautiful time to be out in the country side everything is fresh and clean and ever so quiet.

But at dawn photography is not just about shooting the sun rising, look around you for other things like the grass and the leaves, these are my favorite subjects and at dawn they are at there best, often covered in dew drops. Shoot the sunrise through the grass or use the grass as the foreground. Remember the 123? Foreground. Middle ground and Background. Look for leading lines to draw your eyes into the picture like the rocks in the shot above, pulling you irresistibly into the dawn.

Use the grass or reeds like a curtain to look through, this again will draw the eyes of the viewer into the picture, everyone wants to see through to the other side. Look for spider webs glistening in the the early rays of the sun. This is the time of day when you see them a little later and they become invisible as the bright sun drowns them out.

Spider webs are intriguing and beautiful things but they can be difficult to shoot, move around them and look for the best angles to make them the most interesting and look for the best way the light shines on them. In the Everglades dawn light they can be seen everywhere but by 10am they have all vanished, they are still there but the harsh sunlight makes them invisible. This is why the dawn is such a magical time for photography.

I love shooting the dawn through things like webs, grass and flowers. By using a wide angle lens I can shoot close ups of the webs and still get some of the distant sunrise to show through. I diffuse this distant light by shooting at f5.6 to narrow the depth of field.

Remember that if you are shooting in low light you will need a tripod and you should always use one when shooting macro. Shooting flowers at dawn can produce some startling and beautiful pictures, get down low on a  level with the flower and shoot into the rising sun, look at the way the soft light shines through the leaves and petals, keep to f5.6 or less to soften the background but still getting the early morning glow.

Look at the way the light beams shine along the ground highlighting the grass as it goes, look for the light picking out certain flowers or leaves or even single blades of grass. remember it is not what you see, but how you see it that counts. Dawn is the magical time of day and I know it is hard to get up before the sun, sometimes long before the sun if you have to drive somewhere to shoot. I do it every day because I know that if I miss just once, that will probably be the best dawn ever. And like the song by Aerosmith says “I don’t want to miss a thing”.

If you want to get those magical nature photos of the grass and the leaves and the flowers you have to be out shooting when the light is at it’s best. Sunset is good but the dawn is a lot better if you get the dewdrops and moisture in the air. An early morning mist in the country side is enchanting and a challenge to photograph but it is a lot of fun.

Maybe I am just lucky that I live in the Everglades and the weather is never too cold, although it does get too hot in the summer months and high humidity, but it is alway just a little cooler at dawn. So there you have it.

Join me on Google Plus for the #DawnOnSunday photo theme.

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