Sunrise Over the Bunker

Photo of the Day

This was one of the photos from my trip that I was pleasantly surprised with. I found a set of tunnels to walk through to get to the backside of Hawk Hill while I was photographing the sunrise. The sun had already come up, and I was hoping to make a photo of the moon setting into the fog. After I came out of the first tunnel I saw this bunker sitting there with tree stumps all around it. I quickly took three shots of it thinking that it looked good, but it would look better once the sun came up a little more. I made my picture of the moon, and decided that the picture would not look that much different the second time so I did not take it. On the plane ride home I decided to look at these pictures to see what they looked like after being combined into an HDR picture. I was very thrilled when I saw the result. There is just something very dreamy about this image to me. It is not my best shot of the trip, but it is one that I like quite a bit. I do wonder what my view would have been had I climbed up on the bunker though. I think I would have been in for a treat judging by the little I can see here. On a journey when I only had the Golden Gate Bridge in mind I ended up with some images that I really liked of a few other things along the way.

Technical Data

As I said before this was converted to HDR using Photomatix. I took three exposures on the scene at -2, 0, and +2. I exposed more for the sky because it was brilliant at that time. This might have been too much for even the three exposures. After bringing the 32 bit file back from Photomatix I realized that I would still have to choose between the bunker and the sky. I chose the sky, and I used a brush in Lightroom to bring back a little of the detail of the bunker. I spent a little time on this image, but I was trapped on a long flight with little else to do. I like the end result enough to post it fairly quickly on here. This is one of those shots that is a little overdone, but that is what gives it that dreamlike quality to me.