Photo Story: Sunrise on the Mississippi River

I had just arrived at Fisherman’s Landing South on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River to photograph the White Pelicans.  I had my Canon 5d Mark iii and 500mm lens mounted on tripod to photograph the Pelicans in flight.

Luckily, I had my Olympus OM-D E-M1stuffed in my jacket pocket and I was able to photograph this beautiful sunrise on the Mississippi River.  The shot was taken handheld.  The Olympus Micro Four Thirds sensor did quite well in the low light and the 5-axis image stabilization of the OM-D E-M1 helped to get a sharp image even with the 12-50mm kit lens.

I really like the convenience of the Olympus OM-D Micro Four Thirds line of cameras.  I can be photographing birds or wildlife with my Canon DSLR and the OM-D in my pocket.  If I see a good landscape or macro shot, I can pull the Olympus OM-D out and snap the picture without having to mess with changing lenses on the Canon.

When you take photos in good light, the images require minimal post processing.  For this photo I simply cropped the image to make the sky and reflection symmetrical, selectively lightened, darkened, and added saturation to the photo, and selectively sharpened the foreground.

Sunrise on the Mississippi River Photo Details

Camera:  Olympus OM-D E-M1
Lens:   Olympus 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 lens
Focal Length:  26mm
ISO:  100
Aperture:   f/10.0
Shutter Speed: 1/200 of a second
Exposure Compensation: -1
Lighting: Sunny, mostly clear sunrise

Sunrise Photo Processing

• Cropped the photo in the Lightroom 5 Develop Module.
• Selectively lightened, darkened, and added saturation to the photo using Viveza 2 from Google.
• Selectively sharpened the photo using the Unsharp Mask Filter and a layer mask in Photoshop CC 2014.

Written by Martin Belan

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Photographing White Pelicans on the Mississippi River
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