Sunrise on Kilimanjaro

Taken about one hour's distance from the top after hiking all night on the final leg of Kilimanjaro. I had a tripod (bought a lightweight $20 job for the trek), which really helped - people thought I was strange for carrying it, but photographers are strange anyhow :).

The final shot was taken about 10-15 minutes after the sun broke the horizon. The 2nd shot is an HDR, about 5 shots taken as rapidly as I could (you can see a little blur on the sun, but I don't think it's too bad?). This is the only HDR I've ever made that was remotely worth keeping.

C&Cs appreciated. Not sure the HDR is good enough.

G

I wish you could open up the shadown of the first one a little bit.

The other 2 are lacking in the excitement that you get just before dawn and actual sunrise.

I agree. The first shot is the winner here. Again I agree that it would be nice to have some more shadow detail there. What an awesome experience that must have been.

Also agrrre that #1 is the best of the three. The HDR would probably work out better w/o the lens flare (or at least without it taking up more than half the image) but I do like the mountainside on the left showing so much detail.

Thks guys. No, no way to get detail in the shadow area in # 1 w/o blowing out the sky. One day they will make a device inside of SLRs that analyzes the scene and dynamically masks for you to do that.. that would take a lot of CPU power though.

I guess I'm back to the drawing board on the HDRs!

GB

I like the first one with some off the top and sharpened up a little like this, Jeff