This was taken with a Bausch & Laumb Discover telescope with camera adapter. The telescope has a camera equivelant focal length of 1000 to 4000mm and I believe I had it set somewhere around 1200mm. I was up early, an hour or so before sunrise, to get to the beach to set up the equipment and let it adjust to the almost freezing temperatures outside (Virginia in the middle of December). And then I sat there, waiting for the sun to come up. Almost froze my (censored) off, had a very nice discussion with a police officer who stopped to see what idiot would be out in this kind of weather, and eventually I got to see and capture this gorgeous sunrise. I guess this falls under the category of "suffering for your art". I have always thought that this picture was not quite complete. A sailboat in silhouette in the foreground would make this a great picture. And the posted image appears to be darker than what I see in Photoshop. I'll have to try and correct that.
Good call by Larry - the duality of making the sun look like a hydrogen blast, when, well, that's basically what it is, is very cool. I've noticed myself that my images also look brighter in Photoshop than when you make jpegs. I think it might have something to do with Adobe Gamma - and that what you're seeing in Photoshop isn't an accurate depiction of the brightness of the image (but mine is still like that, so what do I know?). Add about +10 to the brightness, then export to jpeg and sww how that looks.
Set the controls to the heart of the sun! Nothing missing here. In fact, any foreground element would probably have ruined the effect. Not to say that wouldn't have resulted in an equally good picture; just different. I give this image an A for ATOMIC.
Reading your comment above, I'd like to know how much detail was lost in the dark areas? Please consider reposting it as you intended. You've got my attention.
Well, I like the way it looks here...the roundness of it, combined with the wisps of cloud around the subject and the attachment to the surface of the water make it look more like a hydrogen bomb going off...and that's all the sun is, really. :) This makes a great abstract. Good color and nice framing. Nice shot! :)
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