Yaki Point Lightray

Nikon D810, 30mm, ISO 200, 1/6 sec. f/14

So close, yet so far. This is a pretty good composition, except for the blown out sky in the upper right corner. This image was captured at sunrise, with the sun itself at that brightest point in the image. The overcast sky keeps the rest of the sky from blowing out and allows for a decent exposure of the landscape. I did try exposure bracketing to compensate for the bright sun; it was just too bright no matter the exposure setting.

That single ray of light is the highlight of the image.

I did have two very noticeable dust spots in the clouds on the left side of the original image. The spots appeared on several images before I noticed them while reviewing images in-camera. I used the cameras Image Sensor Cleaning function which knocked the dust off the sensor. Subsequent images were fine. Dust spots in the image above were easily fixed during post-processing using Photoshop’s Content Aware function.

Yaki Point, 36.058613° -112.083175°