Yesterday morning I made a quick trip out to Snowball Hill Prairie, about 20 minutes from my rural Missouri home. This past summer, I donated a one-half day photo workshop for a small group of participants at Snowball Hill Prairie, for the Missouri Prairie Foundation’s (MPF) silent auction to raise money to continue efforts to buy and protect native prairies in the state. Recently, the winning bidder of the workshop contacted me about leading the workshop in the near future. So I decided I needed to make a quick trip out to the prairie and see what is currently blooming.
During the preceding night’s weather forecast, a high likelihood of fog was forecast. With that in mind, I decided to go out well before the sunrise and work at capturing a few images of the prairie in the fog. Unfortunately, no fog was in the area (although I went through some rural fog getting to the prairie). But the sunrise was an A+! Here are a few images I captured just before and during sunrise.
A short while before sunrise, the sky began obtaining a peach color:
As the sun arose over the eastern horizon and fell upon the hilltop prairie, I captured some interesting photos of the background sunrise and backlit Blue Sage (Salvia) wildflowers in the foreground:
After the sun was up, but while the sky was still a tinted color, I grabbed this image of a Blue Sage (Salvia) wildflower:
Beautiful sunrises are more common than not, in the rural area where I live. Waking early to catch these is always a goal I have.
With several errands to run, I only stayed at the prairie for about an hour and a half, but still managed to grab lots of images I like. I will feature more in upcoming blog posts … and may be making another stop by this prairie real soon! :o)
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 body
- Canon 180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
- Bogen 3221 Tripod with ballhead
- ISO 800 (all)
- Aperture f/22 and f/8 (bottom image)
- Shutter 1/13 sec. to 1/200 sec.