Maple Grove Sun Light, by Rod Smoliak, received first place in the City Landmarks category in our annual Focus on Maple Grove photo contest.
This shot was taken with a Sony A7R4 camera with a 150-600mm telephoto lens, at 150mm.
“During this particular week, I was concentrating on sunrise shots due to the haze in the air made by the wildfires out west,” Smoliak says. “Each day of the week, I was trying out various locations to give a little variety to the different sunrises. Given the amount of haze, there was about 20 minutes to find and compose a shot. As I was walking around West Arbor Lake, I could see that I would be able to make the right alignment between a lamp post and the sun if I were to move off the path a little and crouch down a bit.”
Smoliak says, “Although it was possible to look directly at the sun, it was still bright. I needed to adjust a few camera settings to bring down the brightness and to darken the silhouettes.”
