Sunday Sunrise...

On the morning of the 16th of October at  5am my alarm awoke me. I got up threw my curtains open hoping to see stars in the night sky , I wasn't dissapointed . Myself and 3 others colleges friends had arranged to meet at Hilton Gravel Pits a nature reserve near to Derby to try and capture the sunrise. We meet at 6.30am and after a short walk we were set up on the east of a pond so facing west to get the sun rising over some trees which lined the pond. I took some test shots which I will show untill I felt I had aboout the right settings. The sun was due to rise at around 7.30am but whilst waiting so not to waste what little time we had arragend we started takiing shots of the pond and the sky above .All pictures were taken with myNikon D3100 with it's standard lens and my tripod was used.
Health and Safety ; as there was five of us and we were setting up before the sun rise so the light was poor we had to be careful not to get in each others way with ourselves and our equipment. 

The shot above was taken at 7.30am just as the sun had started to rise . I set my camera to 100 ISO to try and get the best image possible but buy doing this I knew I'd have to use a slower shutter speed so my tripod was used. I composed this image to try and draw the eye to the left of the image to see firstly the colours in the sky then thier reflection on the still water.I did this by framing the shot with the over hanging trees, this also helped to obscure the grey sky to the right. This was shot with as small apeture of F14 coulped with a shutter speed of 1/6th of a second .

Shutter speed 1sec, Apeture f20, ISO 100
This image to the right was a chance image taken whilst waiting for the sun to rise . I like the texture shown at the bottom where the twigs and leaves form a base to the image then the eye is drawn by the twigs to the top right to then show the reflection of the sky and the over hanging trees.

Shuu

Shutter speed 1/10sec , f22 100 ISO
I was at first not pleased with this image as I had wanted a stronger view of the sun rising through the trees but looking again was pleased with the warmth shown around the top of the trees and the reflection in water of the trees and the ripples give the viewer a good starting point which then leads to sun reflection which leads to the mist which gives a break to the top of the image.

Shutter speed 1/15sec , f22 100 ISO

Shutter speed 1/30sec , f16 100 ISO

Shutter speed 1/20sec, f25  100 ISOShutter speed 1/5sec, f7.1 100ISO