Celestial Bodies Enhance Bryan Hansel Photography Workshop

The April 22-23, 2017 Bryan Hansel Photography Workshop was held at and near the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, just east of Des Moines, Iowa. Part of the workshop, of which I was a participant of, was a sunrise photography session on Sunday morning, April 23. Official sunrise was 6:13 am CDT. Workshop attenders were asked to meet at the gravel road intersection of W 129th Street S and S 102nd Avenue W around 5:30 am to have ample time to set up. An added bonus shone in the eastern sky at this time: the -4.52 magnitude planet Venus and a beautiful thin crescent moon. The above image was captured at 5:40 am from S 102nd Avenue W, near the intersection. Air temperature was a chilly 45 degrees F.

5:44 am. Another (zoomed out) view of the display from the same location. Many arriving attenders
approached from the road's distant horizon with distracting headlights, forcing photographers to have to wait until the vehicles glided past them in the foreground.

This image shows workshop photographers setting up and capturing the celestial event (right), along W 129th Street S, just south of the intersection of S 102nd Avenue W a minute later. Vehicles parked along S 102nd Avenue can be seen in the background at left. This location was about one mile SW of the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge Center. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.