I only had one shot at this as it was fairly time-specific with various foreground artefacts that were required in-shot, so to do it again would have been pretty much impossible. I'd shot many sunrises before but when it changes from hobby to work, there's an air of nervousness as you want to get the shot perfect. As I started the camera shooting in complete darkness, the nerves kicked in which reminded me of the first time I did a live studio shoot, but kind of in slow motion!

On the first day in my new job as a studio camera operator, I'll never forget that first time of the director's countdown in my cans of '5-4-3-2-1' and the red tally light appearing on my camera. Those last few seconds felt like an eternity as I lifted the camera up on it's pedestal and moved into position in front of the presenter to shoot the opening sequence. Five minutes in and everything felt fine and all my training had paid off. The trouble is with timelapse, I wouldn't know if I'd got my settings right until I'd stopped the camera and reviewed the pictures which would be, at the time of shooting, about two hours later!

A lucky guess with a brief test I'd done the day before, I'd managed to nail the exposure and the shot turned out great From that point on I practised as many times as possible to get good at it and secondly, save my nerves! Fast forward ten years and I've seen and shot more sunrises than I've probably had hot dinners!

So to help anybody who's just starting out, or might need a bit more info, here's my definitive guide to filming a timelapse of the sunrise!

Planning

Top of my list because in the long run it will save you hassle, and in my experience, a lot of hassle! You need to plan. There are circumstances when you can just turn up and shoot a sunrise or even, when you have to just turn up and shoot a sunrise but if you've got the time and the tools, it's always best to plan ahead.

If I can do a recce of a location, I'll go and have a look but if not, it's down to google maps and the good old reliable Photographer's Ephemeris. Based on the fact that you're probably going to be on your own to do this with no director on board, you'll first need to find the location and find out the angle of the sunrise. For this example, I've picked a random bit of the east coast in England.