Sunrise at the beach

You know what’s funny? How your sense of time can be soo distorted sometimes.

This trip to the beach was one of those instances.

I havent gone out for a sunrise photo in awhile…partly because of the struggle to wake up at 4 in the morning sometimes. My plan was to go to someplace familiar since the location will be dark and you do not want to be guessing about your surroundings. It doesn’t make for a great experience. I narrowed my list of potential spots to photograph down to four: The beach, the downtown historic city, the mountain, or the lighthouse. My choice—the historic downtown city.

I had my trip all figured out.

  • Sunrise is at 5:57 a.m.,

  • Travel time takes about 45 minutes,

  • I want to give myself about 30 minutes to get my settings right,

  • Therefore, if I wake up at 4 a.m. and leave no later than 4:50 a.m., then everything should go smoothly. What could go wrong?

THE NEXT MORNING

I wake up at 4:45 a.m…………………………………

Holy crap, are you kidding me?! I am going to be SOOO late. I lied in bed initially to get my bearings and to figure out my next move. Then my internal dialogue went as follows:

“Forget it I’m never gonna make it in time.”

“Well if you find somewhere closer you still have enough time…”

“Nope. Morning’s over. Never gonna get there in time, I’m gonna miss the sunrise, I might as well just go back to bed. “

“Well you’re up and awake now. You’ve wanted to shoot this photo. Let’s just go to the beach instead, since its 30 minutes and you know the area pretty well. So just get out of bed and get ready to leave for 5 a.m.”

“I dunno…its still too far away, I still have to [insert irrational excuse]…”

“Well perhaps, but the longer you lie in bed the less time you have to work with. So you might as well just get out of bed.”

Now you’re probably wondering “Mike did you ever make to in time?…”, and I did. I arrived on site, and the colors were still POPPING. I was relieved to have gotten to the beach with time to spare. I was surprised to the amount of people that were walking the beach at that hour. Lessons were certainly learned such as—don’t listen to your inner self especially at 4 o’clock in the morning, and also I found a few new spots at the beach for photo shots in the future.