Timing And Point Of View

Two factors that have a tremendous impact on the quality of your photographs are timing and point of view. There are two time periods during the day that provide the most interesting and most pleasing light: the first is in the morning from about 20 minutes before sunrise to about 1 hour after sunrise. The second is in the evening from about 1 hour before sunset to about 20 minutes after sunset. This photograph, taken just as the sun was rising, also took advantage of the timing of the ocean tide. I was fortunate on the date this photograph was taken that the tide was low at sunrise. If the tide was high that morning, this particular photograph would have been impossible or, at least it would have looked very different.

The second factor that contributed greatly to making this an interesting photograph was point of view. If I just stood on the balcony of my hotel and took a photograph of the sunrise, it would not have had the impact of this photo. Even if I stood on the beach to photograph the sunrise, it still would not have had the impact of this image. It would have been just another ho-hum sunrise snapshot.

  To make this photo, I went out to a part of the beach that would be under water at hight tide, and got down very low, close to the sand. To help me do this, I used a  Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod with a
 Manfrotto 496RC2 Ball Head.  The unique features of this tripod allow you to flip the vertical column to a horizontal position, and the 3 legs can be spread out to an almost horizontal position (or even full horizontal, flat on the ground, if you want). This combination of features let you position the camera very close to the ground and hold it steady for long exposure times. The 496RC2 Ball Head lets you set the camera angle precisely where you want it for your photo's composition.
 
  This photograph was taken with a
 Canon 5D Mark II camera with a Canon 24-105mm f/4 L IS lens set at 24mm. The exposure was 1 second at f/22 and ISO 100. You can get fairly similar results with less expensive cameras, such as a
 Canon Rebel T3 with 18-55mm zoom lens or a Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm zoom lens. Both of these less expensive cameras have a smaller image sensor than the  Canon 5D Mark II so the 18mm setting on the kit lens that comes with them would have approximately the same angle of view as a 28mm lens on the Canon 5D. So you wouldn't be able to get quite as wide an angle of view as you see in the above photograph, but you could come pretty close. If you wanted to get the same, or even wider angle of view on these less expensive cameras, you could do it with a Canon 10-22mm lens or a Nikon 10-24mm lens. With either of these lenses (depending on whether you choose a Canon or Nikon system) the 10mm lens setting would give you an angle of view approximately equivalent to a very wide 16mm on cameras like the Canon 5D.

 Here is a photograph of the same beach, taken with the same camera and lens, with the lens set to the same focal length (24mm) as the first photo.

The camera was set to properly expose each of the two images, based on the lighting conditions in each. The principal difference between the two photographs are the time the photograph was taken and the point of view. These two elements can make the difference between a simple snapshot and a great photograph that you may want to frame and put up on your living room wall.