Sunrise in China...Take Two

Today was my last day in China this week, and I got up early before the driver took us to the airport.  This time, I was up and at the location that I scouted earlier this week before anyone was out there to "exercise".  One guy did show up about 30 minutes after I had started and sat there slapping himself for at least a thousand times.  Seriously.

I played with the settings a bit before triggering the intervalometer.  This photo on the side, with several seconds exposure, showed the night glow from the city lights before the sun came up.  I also figured out that I can zoom in using the "live view" and focus the lens properly.  This helped immensely when the view was mostly dark and I had little to focus on.  I started the sequence so that the shot was mainly dark as I figured the encroaching light would soon give me a nice shot.  As I progressed with my shots, though, I noticed that the settings I started with only allowed for about 20 minutes worth of decent photos.  After that, the light just overwhelmed the sensor and basically started turning the photo too white.

After getting three series with the pond in the foreground and the buildings in the background, I moved over to the nearby clock tower.  I think the tower is probably my best series thus far...with the hands of the clock moving faster than time while the clouds gently move across the sky.  One can even see the reflection of the clouds in the building's windows.

I only had about 20 minutes for each shoot before heading back to the hotel to get some breakfast before flying back to San Francisco.