Columbus Day Weekend Shooting

Sunrise over the Potomac River

With the long Holiday weekend, I went out a couple mornings for some early morning photo sessions.  I was largely motivated by the Mindful Eye Community Assignment on long exposure night photography.  This assignment required an exposure time of 4 minutes or longer.

The first shot, shown above, was of the Potomac River at Algonkian Regional Park about an hour before sunrise.  The sky was perfectly clear, the river calm, and the sun rising to the east provided a beautiful gradient of color across the sky.

More images after the jump.

San Francisco

I had the opportunity to travel to the San Francisco area on a business trip last week.  I had been wanting to capture an image of the Golden Gate Bridge, so after my plane landed late Wednesday afternoon, I hurried to try to get to the bridge before sunset.  Unfortunately I missed the overlook I was planing to go to and ended up further down by Fort Barry.  My first set images were clouded by the brown smog from the city.  

Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge

I also captured a view what I think is Rodeo Cove.  I captured 5 different exposures and combined then using Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro to give it a very ethereal feel.

Rodeo Cove

After leaving Fort Barry, I drove back to the Golden Gate Bridge area and found what appeared to be a fishing pier on the northeast side of the bridge.  It still wasn't the angle I was originally looking for, but it provided a nice view of both the bridge and the San Francisco skyline.

Golden Gate Bridge

For this last image of the Golden Gate Bridge, I used a long (~30 second) exposure and then processed the image in Adobe Photoshop Raw Converter to set the white balance to fluorescent to get the colors to look right.

San Francisco Skyline

Thanks for looking and I look forward to reading your comments.