2025 10-24 Sunrise

 Thursday night I did a deep dive into researching how to capture better sunrise and sunset photos.  So this morning I tried to take what I had learned to the sunset. When I looked at my photos the first time around I was very pleased.  But when I started to edit them, I noticed some strange rather large red dots in my photos.  Then I remembered - I had taken off the lens cap and then the lens hood and put them on the table.  I had totally forgotten about lens flare - caused by shooting into the sun and not shading your camera lens. This causes what is called a lens flare - or large red dots on your photos.  

So the next thing I researched was how to get rid of the large red dots.  I tried my old method of getting rid of them by manually using the band aid - healing tool.  It is not very good in Lightroom.  But there was a new tool under this same setting that used AI.  I tried to use it by just figuring it out myself - not successful.  But you can ask Google anything right?  I watched a couple of you tube videos and was flabbergasted by the improvement.

Once I knew what I was doing - it worked like a charm.  Now I know how to get rid of all kinds of unwanted elements in my photos.  Why didn't I learn this earlier!

Minutes before the sun rises.  All photos taken from our 20th story apartment windows.

The sky right by the sun was not very exciting - but if I opened up my lens and included more in my photos - the sky was very dramatic.

A total sky photo.

And what about a totally different angle - even more dramatic.

But now the sun is close to rising - so I focus on that.

The small black spot on this photo is a bird.  It would have been fantastic if a large flock of birds would have flown into the scene, but that didn't happen.

The sun keeps rising higher.

So I go back to including more of the sky.

Next time I will remember to keep the lens hood on the camera and avoid having to make all these corrections.  But I am glad it happened because I learned something new - that I will continue to use a lot.  Part of the AI tool is that it can recognize people and you can delete any strangers who inadvertently walk into you frame.  I am excited to keep learning.