Playing with light

While we were on vacation in July, there was a night when I did not sleep well. Between Clara waking up and the rats making scratching noises in the ceiling and who knows what else making all kinds of crazy noises outside, I did not sleep much at all and almost cheered the rising of the sun because that meant the long, long night was over. I was up before everyone else in the house (we stayed in a house with 20 of our relatives) and so I went out and sat by the lake in the quiet and watched the sun come up. It was glorious! I think I was up for a full hour or so before Eric and Clara joined me. (That never happens normally. Eric is an early bird and is regularly up hours before I am. He voluntarily sets his alarm for 5:00 am everyday. That's nuts!)

By now the sun was well over the horizon so I went and grabbed my camera and snapped a few pics of my sleepy eyed daughter and husband. I've seen some gorgeous portraits on flickr that were taken facing directly into the sun, which creates some dramatic sun flare. I thought I would try the technique myself.

I don't know if technically I did it right because it required a lot of photoshop work to make these pictures look decent. But I kind of like the effect.

Here's one more shot taken in the beautiful early morning light, but this time without the flare.

What do you think? Do you like the dramatic, sun flare style of portraiture?