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- Prepare the night before
- Know what time the sun is rising
- Wake up early
- Bring your tripod
- Get to location 20 minutes before the time the sun should be rising
- Figure out where in the horizon the sun will pop up from
- Set up your tripod
- Set up your camera
- Shoot!!
- Prepare the night before – Before you go to bed make sure you’ve packed your camera bag and your tripod. Make sure that you have your house and car keys ready to go. Make sure you know exactly where you’re going to be going to shoot the sunrise and make sure you have your route set. Make sure that you account for parking!
- Know what time the sun is rising – This one is pretty easy. You can use an app, or watch the news to find out what time the sun will be rising in the sky.
- Wake up early – Obviously, you need to wake up before the sun rises. Set an alarm, maybe two! Make sure that you are giving your self enough time to wake up, get ready, grab your gear, travel time, and time to park!
- Bring your tripod – While this isn’t mandatory, it makes life much easier! You’re going to want to take multiple shots of the horizon to make sure you get the best picture possible. It’s best to bring a tripod so you’re not holding your camera up for long periods of time trying to get the horizon. Also, there are more important details that will be highlighted in the “set up your camera” section.
- Get to location 20 minutes before the time the sun should be rising – You never know what’s going to happen, even that early in the morning. Make sure you give yourself enough time to find the right spot and time to set up your equipment.
- Figure out where in the horizon the sun will pop up from – If you want to be sure, there are several apps out there that will tell you exactly where the sun will pop up from the horizon
- Set up your tripod – Make sure you set up your tripod correctly. It may be a windy day, so you want to make sure that you have your tripod weighed down, or you have a lower center of gravity.
- Set up your camera – The sun will be popping out, so you can use a low ISO. Try using ISO 100. If you’d like you can set your camera to shutter speed priority. This you can play around with a little. For the pictures above, I used 1/8 of a second, and I let my camera figure out the aperture. I also set up my camera for interval shooting. I used the self-timer mode and set it up to take nine pictures in a row (the extent to which my camera can do). There was a one-second interval between each shot (the quickest my camera can do).
- Shoot!
