On a vacation trip to North Conway my son and I took up Ernie Mills
Ernie Mills Photography on his Sunrise tour up Mount Washington via the Mt. Washington Auto Road
Mt. Washington Auto Road.
The trip was well worth the money ($200) and getting up at 4 AM to meet Ernie at 5 AM at the bottom of the mountain. Ernie Mills is a great guide, he called the day before to remind us that it would be cold and be prepared. We of course were not considering I only had shorts and a sweatshirt and the same for my son as this was kind of last minute. Lucky for us a trip to the store and we where ready.
Having drove up during the day two days earlier i was excited to see what it would be like during that time of the morning. You'll see in the video it's a little less scary because you can't see over the edge, but then again you know what's over the edge at a few spots. We were able to drive to the summit however, the wind was too much for us to get out to take any pictures. Ernie had indicated that in his call but assured me we would find a spot to get some shots. We ended up driving back down several hundred feet to a little safer location. With the van as our wind shield we were able to get some great pictures of the sun as it came up over the mountains as well as the wild cloud formations. We then drove back up a little ways and got some great video of the clouds as they came over the mountain with the windspeeds of about 65 to 75 miles an hour.
I was cold and nervous about shooting. Ernie is a pro and I am like many a self taught guy that plays a photographer on the Internet
-I had the K5 and my bag with most of he lenses I have. Had to do over I would bring the k10 or rent another K5 as switching back and forth between lenses was a little difficult in the wind and short window.
I used mostly the Sigma 70-200 2.8 Oder model I have that has seen better days. And a few with the 16-45da. All tweaked a litte one way or another. The video is mostly shot with the K5 with a few spots with my flip. I would recommend this to anyone and hope to go back for a sunset trip and an actual hike on foot.
1 - Our ride
2 - Still could see stars before the break of the sun over the mountains
3 - The cloud formations were amazing.
4 - Sun breaks
5 - one of my favorites
6 - Another favorite - SMILE :-)
here is the video -
hope you enjoy and comments welcomed.