On Saturday, reading the notes for Weekend Two I thought,’Dawn to Dusk’, what a great idea, Monday’s relatively clear, I’ll knock it over then. I checked the weather forecast and sunrise on Monday 16th was for 7.30am. That didn’t sound right to me as on Saturday 16th March is was bright daylight at 7.30am.  As I’m a bloke and always right, I knew the forecaster meant 6.30am. Mistake No 1.

So, came Monday morning 16th March and I was out of bed at 5am, black as pitch. It’s early autumn I thought, won’t be cold outside. Mistake No2.  Wearing shorts, T shirt and track suit top for the stroll down to my chosen viewpoint to wait for dawn was  mistake No 3.  When I got back home, frozen stiff about 8am I learned it was only 5 degrees C when I left home at 5.30am. Not cold by many standards but here where it reached into the 40s C just a few weeks ago is seemed below zero where I stood for quite a while making these images.

From my selected viewpoint on a bridge crossing the Wollondilly River just after 5.45am I could just make out the lights of an outbuilding near the historic Goulburn Waterworks and not much else. I set my camera up on the tripod, checked the light meter,  readied the camera for my first exposure and set the ISDO at 640. Here is No 1, lens set at 200mm, exposure 30 seconds @ f2.8, ISO 640.

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My next exposure was made just 12 minutes later at 6.11am, again with the lens set at 200mm, exposure 25 seconds@f8, ISDO 640.

Nine minutes later at 6.20am, the lens still set at 200mm, exposure was still 25 seconds@f8. ISO remained at 640.

At 6.30am, for image No 4, I decided to vary the field of view and set the lens to 70mm in order to catch the mist rising from the water trapped behind the weir. Exposure this time was 15 seconds@f8, and I left the ISO at 640. This image was made exactly 1  hour before sunrise.

Immediately after making the above image, I zoomed the lens back to 200mm and made this next exposure , 25 seconds@f8, ISO remaining at 640. It’s interesting to note that the exposure time increased by 10 seconds on the lens change between 70 and 200mm.

Finally, the cold got to me and I decided to to head home.

My next two images were made about 2.30pm from the same viewpoint. I changed the ISO back to 100 and left the aperture at f8. For the first image I set the lens at 200mm and exposure at 1/160th second@f8, then for the second, I pulled the lens back to 70mmwith the exposure set at 1/250th second , again at f8.

Later, about 6.30pm from the same viewpoint, I made the following image, closing the aperture down to f16 to take advantage of its greater depth of field in the hope of recording the lengthening shadows on the hills in the background. With the lens set at 70mm, exposure at f16 was 1/30second at ISO 100.

About 15 minutes later, about 6.45pm with the lens zoomed back to 200mm, I made the following image, exposure 1/13th second, again at f16 and ISO still at 100.

Then, about 7.05pm I made my final image at 70mm, aperture 1/5th second, still at f16 with ISO at 100.

All of the proceeding images have not been post processed and are exactly as recorded in camera. The only exception has been in the reduction of image size to 10MB or less.

However, on walking home just before sunset, about 7.25pm I couldn’t resist the cloud in the darkening sky so here is its image, enhanced slightly in post processing.  Hope you like it.