The vibrant color of a summer sunrise along with the wooden pathway to calm waters provide an irresistible invitation to the Lake Michigan shoreline at Selner Park Beach in Kewaunee, Wisconsin.

When I glanced out my window and saw the early morning sky – long before the sunrise – I thought it looked promising for a cool sunrise. I dropped everything to get to the lake shore and was able to capture a great batch of lighthouse sunrise photos. (Watch for future posts.) Just as I was packing up my camera (I was running late for an early morning appointment elsewhere) I decided to throw my wide-angle lens on and see what I could capture. At this distance, the wide-angle makes the lighthouse just a dot on the horizon but it captures a whole lot more of the sky, which was the goal.  Framing up the wooden path in the foreground makes it all the more interesting.

This is the last shot I snapped that morning. This is actually an HDR image. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.  To try to capture the full dynamic range of this scene I blended four separate shots at different levels of exposures (from light to dark).  Without blending the images/exposures you would end up with either a normal looking sky and everything else in darkness or a normal looking lake and land in the foreground with a colorless, completely white sky.  The camera is not able to adequately handle such a wide dynamic range on its on so a little processing magic is needed to get these results.

This is one you will want to view the larger, full-screen size. To do so, simply click on the photo.

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