Sunrise in Sacramento

Photo of the Day

On our last day in California I was determined to soak everything in. Of course I had seen a few great bridges during our short trip, but everyday in Sacramento all I had to do was look out the window to see the Tower Bridge from our room at the Embassy Suites. This was no accident. When we booked the hotel we asked for this view. Over the course of the four days we were there I took a few pictures from our window. None of them spoke to me though like this one taken at sunrise on our last day. The sun had come up behind me, but the colors that it gave off were amazing.

Technical Data

This was shot with the intention of making a three shot HDR image. In fact I have included a version that is HDR next to this one in my SmugMug gallery. I liked the colors from this metered exposure better though so I decided to use it. I did use a preset in Lightroom though to get me close. I used Matt Kloskowski’s HDR Look (medium) to get it close, and then I tweaked the sliders to try and recreate the beauty of that morning.

Over the course of the trip I made many beautiful images with the 24-70mm lens that I had just purchased. I love the lens, but here I couldn’t zoom as far out as I would have liked. On a full frame camera that may have worked, but here it did not. I instead switched quickly to the 10-24mm Tamron lens that I have had for over a year. I really like the range it gives me, and it helped me get this shot. I only used a couple of lenses on this trip which just shows how much faith I have in those lenses.