Photographing the Sunrise

Joe Livolsi sheds light on capturing one of the most awe-inspiring times of the day.

Article By Jennifer Gidman

Images by Joe Livolsi

Sometimes the most beautiful photographic moments come when you're least expecting them. For Joe Livolsi, that moment came recently one morning when he was getting the paper in his driveway. "I noticed the sun coming up over the meadow," says Livolsi, who lives on the North Shore of Long Island near Crab Meadow Beach. "Sometimes we get a little bit of haze coming off the ground that early in the morning, but this time it was a picture-perfect day. The sky had these ridiculously amazing colors that were bouncing off the water in the meadow."

Livolsi, a director of photography and owner of Crab Meadow Films, didn't have time to grab a lot of gear as the sun made its ascent. He got his camera and three Tamron lenses (the 28-300mm VC F/3.5-6.3, the SP 17-50mm F/2.8 VC, and the SP 10-24mm wide angle) and headed out to the tidal wetlands. "The great thing about those three lenses is that I had a variety of focal lengths and glass that's consistently impressive," he says. "I don't do a lot of color correction in general, and with these shots, I didn't do any. What you see is how I saw it."

Read on for Livolsi's tips on how to capture that early-morning glow before most of your neighbors are even stirring to brew that first pot of coffee.

Be spontaneous.
I look for my camera whenever a moment strikes me, and then I capture that moment, like I did here. When you're shooting something that happens so fast, you don't have a lot of time to think, you just "do." Of course, that means you have be ready to handhold. That sun was rising - I didn't have the time or inclination to get a tripod. If you see a sky like that, the last thing you want to do is waste time gathering more gear. You want to get into a good spot as quickly as possible. Plus, you might have to go through the woods to get to where you want for the best vantage point, which is hard to do if you're lugging a lot of stuff.

Use a variety of lenses.
For most of my shots that morning, I used the 28-300. Because I was working so fast, it was nice to have a versatile lens that let me quickly go to a variety of different focal lengths. I also used that lens to get a little closer to the osprey nests we have out here.

But I also pulled out my 17-50 and the 10-24. I used to do a lot of stuff in film with a fisheye lens to distort the background. When I was walking back from the meadow and spotted those light fixtures, I thought it would be fun to use the wider 10-24 to get the sun coming through them. You have a lot of focusing ability with that lens for the closer, wide-angle shots, and you're able to nicely distort your subjects.

Introduce different elements to enhance your composition.
With the newer cameras, it's hard to take a really bad picture unless you don't know how to compose it. If you can get a foreground element into your sunrise shot, like I did by incorporating the reeds into some of my images, that can be really neat. If you're using a wider lens, you might want to get something in the lower quadrant that plays in with the overall picture and complements what's going on in the sky. A lot of people don't do that - they just focus on the sun itself.

Don't be afraid to go off "autopilot."
I'm not into everything being so automatic. I think people shy away from switching to manual, but today's cameras are so advanced that now you can just go in and dial a little bit here, a little bit there, and get something you're happy with.

A lot of times with autoexposure, for example, it doesn't give you what you really want. Just go into manual and play a little with your settings. In terms of shutter speed for shots like the ones shown here, I usually gravitate to around 1/60 of a second, mainly because that's what I'm comfortable with from the moving film world. That said, I know it doesn't always work - I might have to go 1/120 or 1/20, depending on the situation.

I like to stay at low ISOs, usually between 100 and 200. I know today's cameras are faster, but when you start to get into the higher ISOs, they get too grainy for me. For these early morning shots, I was between 100 and 150.

Don't go in with a set exposure mindset.
I go a lot by feel. Some people might expose for the brightest part of the sun and then stop down a little bit, but for me in this situation, it was all about firing off a couple of shots, then looking at them and saying, "OK, I need to open up a bit or close down some more." For example, there were a couple of shots I took where the meadow went a little too dark, so I opened up a little. Then the bright part got too hot, so I had to quickly readjust until I found that happy medium.

Don't back down, either, if you're not pleased with the first couple of shots. OK, so you overexposed one. Now underexpose a little and find that sweet spot. Don't just freak out and go back to auto.

Appreciate the sunrises as much as the sunsets.
Near me, the sunrises are actually better than the sunsets, because they come up right across the meadow. You also have more time in the morning. First you'll get that orange-purple glow, then the sun will come up, and then you have even more opportunity to shoot other things. With a sunset, you're always chasing it. You only have so much time: Once the sun goes below the horizon, you have about 15 minutes or so before it all goes black.

Plus there's something that's just pretty spectacular about capturing a sunrise. It's so quiet in the morning, and if you do actually head out ahead of time and get there early enough, you can settle in and enjoy the scene before you start shooting. The birds are moving, you're starting to hear the noises - everything's starting to come to life at that time of day.