Dawn really has become my favourite time of day of late and my experiences yesterday morning just confirmed my belief that there is nothing quite so glorious as sitting on a beach, on rocks or on the top of a cliff waiting to greet a brand new day with your camera primed.

This is a series of photographs, some long exposures, some regular shots that document the changing light over the course of about 45 minutes as the sun rose.  I used a graduated neutral density filter to allow for a balanced exposure given the brightness of the sky, shooting directly into the sun.

If you’re thinking of buying a set of graduated neutral density filters, I wouldn’t bother with the soft variety.  It’s important to position a hard graduated filter correctly to ensure you don’t get a line across your picture but I don’t believe a soft grad ND filter is a substitute for not positioning your filter correctly in the first place.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. Click for a clearer sharper view.. :-)

56mm f/11 301 sec. ISO-100 Lee 10 stop Neutral Density filter plus a Lee 0.9 Hard Graduated Neutral Density Filter and a B+W Circular Polarisier

56mm f/11 301 sec. ISO-100 Lee 10 stop Neutral Density filter plus a Lee 0.9 Hard Graduated Neutral Density Filter and a B+W Circular Polarisier

56mm f/11 1/50 sec. ISO-100 Lee 0.9 Hard graduated Neutral Density Filter plus a B+W Circular polarising filter

38mm f/22 1/5 sec. ISO-100 Lee 0.9 Hard graduated Neutral Density Filter plus a B+W Circular Polarising filter

24mm f/22 181 sec. ISO-100 Lee 10 stop Neutral Density filter plus a Lee 0.9 Hard Graduated Neutral Density Filter and a B+W Circular Polarisier

24mm f/20 1/5 sec. ISO-100 Lee 0.9 Hard graduated Neutral Density Filter plus a B+W Circular Polarising filter