Dewey Beach greyhound sunrise

The appeal to see greyhounds and their owners walking or standing on the beach while waiting for the sun to rise at Dewey is (to me, anyway) irresistible. (Well, it is irresistible if you live in the same time zone. I'm three hours behind the east coast, so it was 4am according to my body-time.)

Maybe rendering dog and owner in silhouette is old and cliched, but it attracts me still. Besides, it's what I get when I shoot up-sun. Other than using the daylight white balance setting to add some warmth to the pictures (and because I didn't want the bluish cast you'd normally get at this time of day), and switching between program, aperture- , and shutter-priority modes, i touched nothing else. I'm a little surprised with the results I got since I wasn't thinking too clearly (I had two hours of sleep the previous day, and sleeping during the four-and-a-half hour flight to Baltimore only left me with a huge headache).

The shadows have a hint of detail in them, which can be easily revealed with adjusting the Darks parameter in Lightroom. I started to notice that I had dust specks on the images, either on the sensor, the mirror, or the focusing screen. I'm not happy about that, although it's inevitable.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; top and middle picture: aperture-priority with aperture set to f/2.8; camera chose 1/4000 second at ISO 800; bottom picture: program mode; camera chose shutter speed of 1/800 second at f/14; ISO 200; all pictures used daylight white balance; normal JPG.)