Waking up early for me is usually a pretty easy task. For example: twice a week, I'm in the pool by 5:30am to do a one mile swim, and still somehow remain functional to survive the work day, and then go back to gym for further training. Easy.

But when on holiday? Not so much...

However, on a trip / holiday to the Drakensberg mountains a few weeks ago, I was up and about at 4am every morning, shooting the full moon, and then moving locations to capture the sunrise about an hour later - it's summer here now, so the sun rises really early.

One morning while shooting footage for my drone compilation video that I finally got around to making (watch it here), I decided to land the drone for a little while and do some proper landscape photography - the surroundings were too good to pass up.

What you see above is a three image panorama, covering a nearly 180 degree view from one of my favourite places in the mountains - the Hippo pools. I've already shot many a sunset here, so being able to capture the golden sunrise glow across the valley was a good experience.

Obviously, this image here is very compressed, but full size it measures close to 10,000px wide. I think I see a new canvas print in the making!

Don't believe I was up that early? Here's some of the original file data:

Equipment Setup

Camera	Canon 6D
Settings	1/30 / f8 / ISO 100
Lens	Canon 24-105 F4 L Series
Additional	Hoya CPL filter / Manfrotto tripod
Processing	Lightroom CC / Photoshop CC for panorama blending
Location	Southern Drakensberg, South Africa

PS: Thanks to The Skids for the title!