| I drove onto the beach
and parked next to the
Quintana Park Fishing Pier,
it was still dark but I could just make out the outline of the pier
against the faint light of the stars. I was glad to see that an unusually
high tide had deposited some huge tree limbs high onto the beach, and was
also creating a wide, slick, wet sandy shoreline that would reflect the
colors of what I hoped would be a beautiful sunrise.
At Quintana and
Bryan Beach State Park
you often see this type of debris on the shore, as the Island city sits
between the old Brazos river mouth and the new Brazos river, the
nearby beaches tend receive much of the outflow from both of them.
Using a flashlight I was able to
scout the area and try and find the best location to photograph the
sunrise, I walked East along the waters edge and found exactly what I was
looking for, a massive tree limb partially buried in the sand and
water, I knew this was one of the
places I would be when the time was right.
The pier was my first
choice however, so I headed back to my car and grabbed my tri-pod and
cameras and headed to a spot about one hundred feet West of the pier, blue
light was just starting to become visible over the horizon.
|
I set up on the hard sand just above
the water line, in order to keep the tripod from sinking and blurring the
image during the long exposures. I took several 30 second exposures with
my medium format camera, then took several frames with the digital camera,
moving around the general area until I found the composition that I liked,
I continued this procedure for some time, getting lost in moment I almost
forgot that I also wanted to shoot the tree limb that I had scouted
earlier.
The sun was still below the horizon,
but getting closer every second, I wanted to make sure I was in position
before it appeared in sky. I started running down the beach, awkwardly
holding the fully extended tri-pod with camera attached, camera bag,
filter bag and my digital camera. Three hundred yards later and out of
breath, I set up just in time to capture a glowing red, orange sun
as it just started peek above the ocean.
Story and Photography by
George Hosek
Click here
to see the picture of the sunrise with tree limb.
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