I decided to get off my butt and outside early today.  Not the greatest decision considering how cold it was, but it did allow me to get a few nice pictures during the sunrise.  You never know what a Sunday is going to bring and what you will be doing so I thought it best to explore with the camera before the rest of the family crawled out of their beds.  I do know that one agenda for me today is to find a pair of gloves I can use with the camera.  Challenge accepted!

I walked down the road this morning in the direction of the rising sun.  I endured the cold wind in my face because I knew the walk back would definitely feel warmer.  There are snowmobile trails throughout our county and luckily for me there is one that crosses the road close by.  Being able to walk the fields on the hard packed trail was better than trudging through the snow that would have surely been over my boots.

There is always a moment as the sun rises where the sky is a multitude of colors.  The effect is helped here by the presence of some low cloud cover but it does make for vibrant pictures.  Very little processing for this picture.  I added some contrast, a little clarity and toned down the vibrance some in Lightroom.  I also needed to remove some of the noise I always seem to have when there is an abundance of sky in my pictures.  I’m sure it is due to my camera only saving JPEG files.  Looking forward to upgrading to a little better camera soon.

I was fortunate that a couple rebel snowmobilers decided to venture off the marked trail and cut across the field in the direction of my house.  It allowed for some additional exploring without having to retrace my steps along the road.  The higher the sun reached in the sky the colors dramatically changed which gave me this picture about 15 minutes after the one above.

By the time I finally reached the road on the other side of my house I noticed the this view across the valley. It is taken about 90 degrees from the sunrise pictures and again presents a totally different look to the morning.