For a while I was shooting real estate photos, it helped pay some bills and once in a while I’d get an opportunity to produce a good image. This house had a water feature in the back yard that I wanted to work with. When doing anything outside I always use The Photographer’s Ephemeris. There are a lot of tools out there that will tell you where the light is, but this is my favorite. It gives the location of the sun and moon, as well as giving you the ability to tell it where the high point is between the sun and your subject. Also tells you civil and nautical twilight. I was a Navigator in the USAF so I just like having lots of data on celestial bodies.
I used The Photographer’s Ephemeris to determine when the sun would be rising and from where. I made sure the owner was OK with me showing up early in the morning, and next day I set up my lighting on battery packs. Then I waited to watch the sun come up and waited until it was filtering through the trees to catch this image. The sun had absolutely nothing to do with the lighting on the water feature.
Post production on this image is fairly light. Sharpening, levels adjustments, that kind of thing.
