Stormy Sunrise @ the Flatirons

On the bright side, I got to witness one of the best sunrises I've seen in quite a while. On the down side, the wind was HOWLING intensely and driving rain directly into the lens making it practically impossible to make a decent photograph. The wind was easily blowing over the camera; I couldn't let go of the tripod for even a second or the whole rig would have ended up in Kansas . I tried hanging my camera bag on the tripod hook for stabilization, but the wind was pushing that hard, too - and that's probably 40 lbs! Unbelievable.

I'd dry off the lens, turn back into the wind and hope to compose and fire off a shot before the rain pelted the glass. Then I'd turn out of the wind, dry off the lens, rinse and repeat... Crazy. The light lasted for about 8 minutes and I think I was able to get 2 or 3 decent images in between 'oooohs' and 'aaaaahhs' and "!%^#@$*#! wind!"

Here's the first one that has promise. I need to inspect the full-size file closely for water drops; hopefully nothing so bad that I can't clean it up. Surprisingly the 2 or 3 images I got look reasonably sharp given that I had to lean on the tripod to keep it steady during 1 second exposures. The .jpgs here may look a little soft as I applied very little sharpeing in order to avoid the dreaded halos (time to get a sharpening plug-in I think).

Here's the second one that I think can be saved. In quickly scanning the RAW file, it looked like only a few water droplets on the lens/image, and small ones at that.

hehe, I was up as well. I didn't get a shot though. My tripod is too light, and I was too big of a wimp to stand out in the wind. It was a lovely sunrise though.

Rick, is your main goal here to make me feel guilty about sleeping in this AM? It worked!!! HA!

Stunning, especially the second one! Sunrise rainbow! Wow!! Well worth the wind, rain and effort you took to get these Rick! Awesome! More, more!!

I watched the sunrise this morning too... from my living room in my boxers... I wasn't quite as motivated as you to get outside! The wind was shaking my house (still is), so I didn't think my tripod would have held up so well anyhow. But wow what spectacular light. I saw a morning-rainbow too, and was thinking "I hope someone is taking a picture of that!" Good job!

Killer stuff! That rainbow shot is to die for.

Rick, Nice work, I saw the same light show and other end of the rainbow down by me at Ken Caryl and C470 on my way to work this morning, I wish I had chance to stop and take a couple of shots.

Thanks guys! Yeah Brent, how bad would you feel if I told you that I had a spare baggie of jerky with me, too!

Darren - yes, there's little processing done on these. I played with the first one for a while and have something I'm liking. I'll play around with the rainbow one tomorrow. I just wanted to get something up quickly to make Brent feel bad about sleeping in!

Well worth the pain! But I think you could have shot this from the comfort of your roof.

Cool picture Rick! Our skies down south didn't light up nearly as well!

Ken

A surreal, once in a lifetime shot - nice job getting the killer image in such intense conditions. Thanks for telling the story behind the photo too. How about a portfolio from that same spot?

Dave Showalter

Bill - I'll keep that in mind for the next wind storm; we'll need a new NPN category for Xtreme Photography!

Dave - I like that idea. I think I'll see what I've accumulated from that spot. Might make a nice little series.