Misty meadow sunrise

This picture was shot during a early morning shoot in the meadows near my home town of The Hague. It was just such a beautiful morning wating to be captured. The location is about 5 kilometers from my house and it is one of my favourite places to shoot a misty meadow sunrise.

The little bridge is a small bikelane bridge and it gives a great foreground for such photos. It really is such a characteristic Dutch setting! Being only accessible by bike, I jumped that morning on my bike and had to cycle for only 5 kilometers to get to this point. The conditions were perfect for misty meadow shoots. Where I was standing there were a couple of friendly and curious cows at about 50 meters away. Later on they showed some curiousity and approached me when I was soaking in the landscape.

In that time I was very into getting to the lowest F-number value for a lens. Oblivious for any rammifications for this setting, I had my F-number on 3.5, the lowest for this lens possible (EF-S 10-22 mm) at the 10 mm focal length setting. I have almost always my ISO speed on 100, just to fight the noise. With those two settings set, the exposure time was 1/640th of a second. At that speed you do not need a tripod, however I have used one at that moment.

With hindsight, I would probably use an F-number of about 9 to 13 just to get a sharper image. I would also proabably use a variable ND filter to get more detail from the lower part of the image and I would also go for a longer exposure time, just to probably get some more mist in the image. With a tripod, a longer exposure time would not have been any problem at all and that would also illiminate any rimpling in the water. Composition wise I would probably have the reflection of the tree in the water completely cut loose from the wateredge and perhaps a tat to the right just to loose the branch on the left side of the image.
Lessons learned: Do not go for the lowest F-value, use a variable ND filter and take more time for the composition.

In post I did not do anything other than adding the watermark, boosting the shadows a bit and lowering the highlights a bit. So, the picture was made on the spot, without any fancy settings and without any post processing. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location