12 Seconds Worth

Seeing as today's best sunrise picture was nearly a carbon copy of yesterday's picture, I thought I'd rewind and go back to this picture.  Sometimes I forget Flickr is social media for *photographers* (and everybody else gets to enjoy). 

Anyway, this is the Bankhead Trail that leads to where I take pictures at the overlook. I walk it on most days so I have a pretty good sense about where the pictures are and how to get them.  On this morning, I knew we had valley fog so as soon as the sunrise was over I drove to the bottom of the trail and started walking back up.  Sure enough, there were "God beams" coming through the fog.  They weren't exactly where I wanted them but let's not quibble about it. 

Anyway, if you'll look back in my feed for September 8th, you'll see what a difference 12 seconds can make.  I was set up to make this shot. You can see from the exposure data that I had F25 dialed in to get the sunstar.  But I also knew to look for any hiker/biker/runner coming up the trail.  Sure enough, one was coming up so I switched over to my preset setting for just this situation and got the runner going through the scene.  

The difference in aperture made a difference but not nearly as much difference as just that tiny bit of movement — 12 seconds worth —of the Sun.  (Yes, I was using a tripod.)

Nikon D7500 — Nikon 18-300mm F6.3 ED VR

35mm

F25@2 seconds

ISO 400

Polarizer

DSB_1104.JPG

©Don Brown 2025