I love the early morning hours and enjoy watching the darkness give way to the light. This morning I was pleased to be able to capture the predawn colors and then the actual sunrise at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
It was a wonderful way to start the new day.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
WOW
Not everyone is a morning person, but I most definitely am. 🙂
Oh what a lovely bright start to the day! It’s a grey sky start to the day here so rather than look out the window I’ll gaze at your photos! I love the illuminated rays and the loooong reflection in the water!
Thanks, Liz. I was thrilled to capture the sunrise and happy at the way the shots turned out.
Beautiful, Mike.
There’s a rumor that we may have skies clear enough to see a sunrise in the coming week, but in the meantime, this is a lovely substitute.
By the way, I saw my first dragonfly last week. And I wanted to pass this post on to you, as you might be interested in the dragonfly and damselfly book David reviews.
Thanks for the alert on the Paulson book. I have another of his dragonfly books and was not aware a new one is coming out–I just pre-ordered it on Amazon. I am looking hard for dragonflies, but still have not seen one yet, despite a couple of 70+ degree days this past week.
What time did you have to get up for those shots?
I captured ths shots between about 7:00 and 7:30. After the time change, sunrise is now about 7:15, so I did not have to get up outrageously early. Generally I like to get up around 4:30 or so.