Sunrise 1 of 52 for 2020

Landscape photography is a pretty multifaceted game where imagination plays much a part as skill, luck and effort. Take this sunrise at Gerroa today ... I'd imagined catching the sun rising behind Blackhead with fisherman in silhouette, oh and a couple of sea birds, sounds simple.

This was back in November 2019 and was waiting patiently for the sun to move further south down the horizon with the season. What I didn't count on was the bush fires and dust storms this summer.

Since Christmas I'd made two attempts with no luck on the conditions, got some ok shots just not 'that' shot.

Usually your looking to the sky for some high cloud to get that colour bouncing off water etc, for this one, for the image I'd imagined I'd been hoping on a cloudless one an 'Unrise' as I call them, would fit the bill perfectly.

When there's an unrise on the cards I try to get there in time for nautical dawn so I can catch some stars just prior to the big show.

The 'Clearoutside' app had indicated good numbers for today from Wednesday on and with offshore winds predicted I was hopeful that the summer cloud bank might not be present on the horizon to spoil the show.

With very humid conditions yesterday and last night I didn't worry too much about nautical dawn as I was pretty sure there would be sea haze on the beach to get clear stars.

Driving down to Gerroa at 5am the pre dawn show had already begun with a light fog present on the ocean (those offshore breezes hadn't arrived) limiting the horizon to about half of what it should be.

Arriving at Gerroa and dodging the spiders across the trail in the bush I was relieved to see the mist clearing early and catching some of that exquisite colour - the cloud bank wasn't as prominent as usual on the horizon so it was down to walking to where the ephemeris indicated the sun would align with the headland.

Ended up shooting a few angles with all three lenses - no filters - mostly I'll shoot a bracket of 2 or 3 images and blend them in post these days - free's me up to change lenses and locations with little fuss.

Quite happy with the shoot after a very slow start to the year - I had hopes of catching another 52 for 2020 (and who know's I might catch up yet) but I'm glad I got this one in the bank for sure.

Gear used:

Pentax (as always)

K1 Mk1

HD PENTAX-D FA 15-30mm F2.8 ED SDM WR

HD PENTAX-D FA 24-70mm F2.8 ED SDM WR

Tamron SP AF 70-200mm F2.8 Di LD [IF] Macro (A001)

The Clearoutside app on Android

Planit Pro for Android

Edited in
ON1 Photo Raw 2020
Silky Pix Pro 9