Smokin'

Camera: Nikon D200
Lens: Nikon 18-70
f/4.5 at 1/200
ISO 100

One morning last year I got up, grabbed my gear, and headed out to capture the sunrise. I drove to an industrial area in Richmond and waited for the sun. I snapped some pictures as it came up but I wasn’t totally happy with what I got. I seem to spend a lot of time looking directly into the sun. It is probably not very good for my eyes. On this day when I finally looked the other direction I learned that I should do it more often.

The light falling on the area was quite warm. The sky was clear but on my drive towards home I came across this smoke stack coughing and choking out enough smoke to block out the sky. I thought this would be a great place to start shooting a theme that I have been thinking about recently: Obstructions. That is, Man made things that block our view of the environment. Obviously I stopped and snapped a couple shots before continuing my journey home.

Technically, this was not a difficult shot. I was in manual mode and I chose to overexpose by one stop in order to render at least some of the smoke as white. On its own this is probably not a shot that someone would look twice at. However, when it is by side with some other photos that fit the same theme it may have more of an impact. I will find out in the future.