A photo from my deck I took yesterday morning posted to say “Good morning!”
Any
Is this a composite: No
Canon 60D
Canon 70-300 IS USM zoom @ 85mm
f/8
1/8000 sec.
ISO 400
Hand Held
Processed in ACR and PSE 2020 for exposure and sharpness. Photo is full-framed, uncropped. Topaz denoise applied.
Nothing says “Good Morning” like one of the most impressive displays of God Rays that I’ve seen in a long time. Very dramatic conditions indeed. I like the composition in terms of the placement of the clouds, and having the sun slightly off-center. And you have good relative proportions of sky above vs. below the clouds. To me the only question here is whether to make this a total cloud-scape and show no land, or to show more land. As presented, I wish there was a bit more land at the bottom (there may be something there that makes this infeasible, I don’t know).
But overall this is an amazing sunrise, thanks for sharing this with us. A nice start to this morning…
Hi, Ed. Thanks very much for your fine critique. I didn’t crop this shot at all, so the sliver of land at the bottom is all there is, unless I add canvas. I thought it helped frame the shot a bit, but perhaps not? It could easily be removed, of course.
I think it does help frame the shot, and my personal preference would be to show a bit more land, rather than cropping it away (right now its sort of in-between). Since the land is in silhouette, Phtotoshop Add Canvas and Content Aware Fill might do a decent job of adding some more breathing room in the land. Worth a try to see how it looks…
I’ll give it a shot. I’ve not done that before, so I’ll be working on a new skill!! 
Beautiful, perfect sunrise photo! I love it when the rays are all around! Very nice work!
In Photoshop go Image > Canvas Size. It brings up a dialog box. Click on Height and change the settings to Percent instead of Pixels. Try adding say 4%. In the “Anchor” grid at the bottom of the dialog box click on the top center arrow. This is counter-intuitive, but it tells PS to add canvas at the bottom. It will add blank canvas at the bottom, using White, the default.
Using the rectangular marque tool, make a selection of the blank canvas, slightly overlapping with the sliver of land you have. Then go Edit > Fill, and in the dialog box change the setting to Content Aware. This sometimes does a good job, sometimes not. Here is a rework adding 4% canvas, at least it gives you an idea of how it would look with more land, even if that ultimately doesn’t really work for your preferences for the image.
Wow, great instruction @Ed_McGuirk ; thanks! Unfortunately, I am working out of Photoshop Elements 2020. However, your instruction got me where I needed to be, though the process is slightly different. I won’t go into it because I’m sure you’re not interested, but I played with it a bit to see what I could do. Here is an exaggerated example, just to illustrate what I was able to do.
Thanks, Vanessa. I appreciate your comments!
What a great morning and image!
It was an awesome sunrise! Thanks!
Great beams and color. Even before reading any comments, I was thinking along the lines of cropping the bottom and going straight cloudscape. Doing a scroll crop, that works best to my eye compared to the reposts in the thread. By $0.02 and that ain’t worth much these days.
To my eye, Ed’s reworking suits the shot best - showing land indicates that the sun is still pretty low in the sky, but the more land you show, the smaller the main subject. Fantastic colours!
What a morning that must have been.
It was awesome, indeed, Igor!
Beautiful skyscape. I like your choice to include just enough foreground to anchor the scene. I live in Nashville now, but I’m originally from the Texas Panhandle so I know a lot about those grand skies. I like the warm / cool gradient in the sky and the crepuscular rays add a lot of interest in the way that they radiate across the scene. If this were mine I would be tempted to crop a little off of the right hand side of the frame. This is a case where a centered composition is actually preferable as it provides some nice symmetry from the radiating rays.
Thanks for your comments, Brian. I appreciate your input.
