What does the Sunrise Look Like from 20,000 Feet Up?

Sunrise and sunset are two of the most amazing phenomenons you can witness.  And they happen each and every day.  You just have to be able to view them to witness them.  I didn’t always have this perspective, in fact I didn’t appreciate photography until it really saved me from a dark time in my life.  Let me explain and then I’ll go into the rationale behind capturing m sunrise and sunset photos that really stand out and have meaning.

When I was first diagnosed with MS in 2007, every day was just another day of suck and I went through a period of depression.  It wasn’t until I took a photography class (at Unique Photo in Fairfield, NJ) and went on photo excursions with expert photographers Michael Downey and Rick Gerrity that I really started having gratitude in seeing the little things all around me and capturing them to remember always.  I now create and surround myself with beauty every day.  With my iPhone camera and my point of view.

One of the most important elements to any sunrise or sunset photo is your point of view.  It doesn’t matter what camera you have on you to capture the photo.  The best camera is the one you’ve got on you.

I’ve taken a variety if photos on my recent vacation to the Florida Keys.

The photos have been in a wide variety of locations particularly because it doesn’t really matter where you are when the sun rises or sets, your point of view or frame of reference matters most.

I was up in the air on a JetBlue airplane flying out of Newark when I caught this first photo on an early flight to Florida.  The sun was rising as my airplane was, and I made sure to line it up out my Eastern-facing window (how lucky was that, to be blessed with not just an early sunrise photo I didn’t have to wake up specifically for, but being planted in a seat on an airplane above the clouds with no clouds in between me and the sun.   And a rare element in the forefront of the sun to add a bonus piece of visual interest – an airplane wing.  OM$&&”ingG.

I wiped down the plane window with some hand sanitizer and a tissue.  I also set my camera app (nope no fancy camera apps, just the native one that comes with an iPhone.  I’m using an iPhone 13 Pro, by the way,  no camera apps from the App Store like I used to tinker with.  Just the regular camera app that comes with the iPhone.

I set the camera to a three second timer, so a burst of 10 photos would be taken, without me having to press the shutter button which causes camera shake.  Especially with my often u reliable Ms. Dropsalot hands.  After my photo shoot is done, I select the single images I want and delete the rest to preserve iPhonr storage space.

To capture this one photo I chose from about 20 different shots.  Not because I had to, but because I was having so much fun doing it.  Most other people on the plane were either sleeping or on their smartphones.  No one that I saw was on my eastern facing side of the plane within the next two rows, capturing the amazing sunrise that I saw unfolding before my eyes.

The plane rose higher and higher through the clouds and changed the view before me quite a few times, so it wasn’t as though I had a very limited change in view with just the angle of the sunrise from a fixed point if I were on land.  I had to be patient and wait for just the right conditions, including where the sun was in relation to the position of the plane, it’s wing, and my point of view.  I kept snapping away happily.

Sometimes I would get the full view of the redness that was coming up over the horizon.  Sometimes I just closed in on the actual sun.  It depended on my point of view at the moment and what seemed to speak to me the most.  Because it was such a rare spectacular view I really had not planned for before liftoff, I was overwhelmed by such beauty before me, I kept snapping away.

I was originally going to share a few different sun photos in this post.  But as I was writing this blog post and it unfolded before me like a sunrise, I realized that my photos require such profound explanation and for my creative point of view to be explained to do them justice, I want to save them for future posts, probably succeeding this one.  I hope you enjoy at least a fraction of the beauty I experienced on that morning.  It takes practice to cultivate your point of view and frame of reference.  It takes alot of gratitude and appreciation for the little things in life. And it takes practice.