One of the best compliments I receive is when someone looks at one of my canvas prints and asks, “Is that a painting?” I’ve even watched people debate with each other back and forth over whether it is a photo or a painting for a few minutes before I would step in to settle it.

I try to get my photos to look as realistic as possible, so when someone mistakes it for a painting, I don’t take it as them saying it doesn’t look realistic. Instead, it makes me feel satisfied to know that I accurately captured a moment that actually looked like a painting in real life.

Some photographers prefer to to get shots with bold colors and sharply contrasting light and dark tones, and they do a great job with it. But I usually prefer the softer palette that happens a little while before the sun comes up.

And that was the case this morning, where a light haze really helped to soften the scene. Shortly after this photo was taken, the clouds started to light up, but the soft glow at the horizon was gone. Most of the time, I will prefer the earlier scene…my favorite time of day.

Make the most of every situation.

The sky was overcast this morning without much color, but the streaks of clouds created a dramatic effect over Pier A.

I hadn’t photographed down there in a while so I decided to head there today.

I had an idea of what my photo was going to be this morning, but nature had other plans. Bright pink clouds to the north caused me to change my shooting location and shot composition in a moment’s notice.

Even when you plan things out, often the timing and circumstances happen differently than you had expected, and you have to be able to make adjustments. But that doesn’t mean you can just “wing it”.

Improvisation is not the same as winging it. Being able to improvise means you are so prepared that even when things don’t happen according to plan, you are able to make adjustments and still get positive results. You are only able to do this BECAUSE you were prepared and had a plan in the first place. Otherwise, you are at the mercy of chance, which may work out randomly once in a while when you get lucky, but is not a sustainable strategy for success in the long term.

It was a mostly clear morning but a few clouds at the mouth of the Hudson River drew me in that direction.

The sun is now rising far enough south that I can sometimes orient my shot toward downtown Manhattan as opposed to Midtown where most of my shots have been aimed.

The sun came up with a beam of light piercing the horizon.

Sometimes it takes an outsider–someone who is removed from your situation–to look at what you are doing and tell you what you can do better. You are often too far in the thick of it to be able to step back and look at yourself from another perspective.

In my case, the response to my panoramics over the past few months has given me a clear message: that I need to shoot more panoramics, (as I mentioned yesterday). It has made me look at things slightly differently.

Looking at the scene this morning I would have never thought to do a panoramic, but when I did it just worked. It created a better image than it would have been otherwise.

This particular shot from this morning is not a series of photos stitched together, as most panos are, but rather a cropped version of a single image.