July 12, 2012
Summer Alpine Sunrise in the San Juan National Forest, Colorado

Yesterday morning I returned to my favorite area near Silverton to photograph sunrise. The day before I had tried a similar composition, but I was reacting to the light and didn't have all of the elements ready. Yesterday morning, I was prepared to capture the rising sun as it crested the horizon. The image was created from four captures (+1 for the shadows in the foreground, 0 for the main part of the land, -2 for the star burst and part of the sky, and -5 for the sun and the rest of the sky) and blended together by hand in Photoshop. I had captured images in 1-stop increments from +1 to -5, cycling up and down as the sun moved across the horizon, and selected four captures from the sequence where the star burst was most intense and that provided enough information to create a good final image.