Exposure is a decision you make twice — once with the meter, once with your eye. Here's how I plan a sunrise the night before.
Exposure is a decision you make twice — once with the meter, and once with your eye. The meter handles the numbers. Your eye decides what the photograph is about. I plan most of that the night before.
The night-before checklist
Where the sun will break the horizon, to the degree. The cloud-cover forecast, hour by hour. The foreground I want, scouted in daylight so I'm not stumbling in the dark. With those three things settled, the morning is just execution.
If you're choosing your composition at sunrise, you're already too late.
Light arrives on a schedule. The more of the thinking you do the night before, the more of the morning you spend actually seeing — and the calmer you are when the sky does something you didn't plan for.
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