When the dawn breaks | A dreamy sunrise shot

Lately, I can't get myself to wake up in the morning to catch the sunrise. Today, I fought the urge to stop the alarm and go back to sleep and went out to catch the sunrise at a nearby lake.

I wanted to get there before the first light of the day, so I can catch the stars and the light of the sunrise in somewhat of a dreamy way.
The image below is composed of 3 images, all taken there and then blended together in Photoshop. I used a mix of long exposure, intentional camera movement and short exposures to get to the final image below.

My technique in detail:

• one 30 sec exposure with a panning from left to right during the final seconds of the exposure to get that smooth looking background;
• one 3 min exposure to get the motion of the stars;
• one exposure of 2 sec for the tree;
• the birds were added in post processing to get that dreamy feel to the image;