Sunrise on Rosamond Dry Lake

Nikon D1h, 18-35mm f/4.5-5.6, Matrix Metering, 2 sec, f/22, +0.7ev, ISO 400, Auto Tone, Auto WB, Gitzo 410

For those interested in the shoot location, this was taken on Rosamond Dry Lake at Edwards AFB. Even though the surface looks cracked, it's quite smooth and rock hard. Another lake nearby supports landings by aircraft as heavy as the Space Shuttle. There's a very fine surface of dust on the lake which only is annoying if your leave your equipment bag open and it's windy. Take my word, you want to zip things up when you lay your bag down.

For those digital photographers, I shot this with the White Balance set to Auto--Auto WB. As a result the image came out with an extreme blue cast because of the early morning conditions. The beauty of working with Nikon's Raw format, NEF's, is you can work with the original file and make fairly major adjustments without adversely affecting the overall quality of the digital file. The blue cast was fixed in MacBibble Vers 1.99 with only two mouse clicks. Another benefit of digital photography is the time from shooting the image until being posted at this location. It was only about eight hours. I didn't have to wait for days because of film development. The only reason it took eight hours was I composed this in the comfort of our local Starbucks. Everyone needs some culture every now and then.