As with any early morning when a beach sunrise shoot is on my mind, my first instinct was to prize my eyes and the blinds open, and look skywards. At 4:00am a promising mix of stars and heavy cloud was all the encouragement I needed to grab my gear and jump in the car.
I was looking for a sunrise composition with water movement over sand and rocks in the foreground. I really like images with a contrast between a dark, moody sky and white foaming waves, so the low clouds might add this dimension.
A quick check of the tides and current wind conditions on my trusty weather app, and I decided that the northern corner of Bronte might be worth a try.
On arriving about half an hour before sunrise it was very warm and calm, with some nice cloud overhead, a good clear horizon out to sea, and some colour starting to show in the sky.
The slight breeze and low swell allowed me to get comfortably close to the water without getting wet, or constantly needing to clean spray off my equipment; allowing some good detail in the foreground.
I experimented with a few compositions, making sure to be in place before the sun rose.
I was helped by a natural filtering of the sun, provided by a very thin layer of cloud. Combined with graduated neutral density filters I kept the sun and surrounding sky from blowing out. This also nicely softened the glow on the clouds and foreground rocks. I tilted the filters slightly down on the left side so as not to leave the headland on the right too underexposed.
A steep sand bank at this part of the beach accelerated the retreat of the waves. This water speed, combined with a shutter speed of 0.5 sec, allowed me to achieve this almost painted on effect of long brushstrokes over the sand in the foreground.
All in all, it was my lucky morning, and perfect conditions for the style of composition I wanted. The only missing ingredient might have been a good strong coffee, but with such early sunrises at this time of year all the local cafes were still closed 🙁
I had a good few images from this session to work through. This one “Seaswept” was the pick of them, and is now featured in my Bronte gallery.
Technical Info …
Sony DSLR-A850. Carl Zeiss 16-35mm f2.8 lens @ 17mm; Exposure 0.5 sec at f/14; ISO 160. Lee Filters 0.6 GND hard & 0.6 GND soft, stacked together. Cable shutter release. Manfrotto 190XPROB tripod with 496RC2 ball head. RAW conversion in Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 7.0.