This was the time of day that we leapt (crawled) out of bed in our Northumberland holiday cottage, put the collars and leads on the dogs, grabbed my pre-prepared camera gear and set off down the field behind the cottage towards the beach.
It was the last day of our holiday so there weren’t many chances left to get my planned shot of the sun rising over Coquet island. According to the Photographers Ephemeris the sun would rise directly behind the island when viewed from the beach – provided we were there in time.
This was during the July heatwave of 2013 and so it was surprisingly warm and already light enough to walk without the use of a torch. It only took about 10 minutes to reach the beach and I found a likely viewpoint and set up my tripod. I chose my Tamron 28-75mm lens and added a 0.6 graduated neutral density filter to balance the light sky against the much darker foreground.
As always, I fired off a few shots just to double-check everything was OK. It already looked good – but that’s the joy of a good sunrise – it just gets better and better and, just when you think you have got the best shot of the morning, it gets better still.
As I waited around, trying out slightly different positions to improve the foreground view, I eventually heard, way off in the distance, the sound of a small motor boat. I thought nothing of it at the time since it was obviously just a small fishing boat coming out of Amble harbour.
However, as the sun started to peep above the island some 30 minutes later I realised that the little boat had managed to make its way towards the island. What were the chances of the sunrise and boat being in the right position at the right time?
Nervously I stood – taking shot after shot as the sun crept ever skywards, every so often taking glance at the boat’s position.
Soon the boat started to travel between the island and the shoreline as the sun beamed its rays towards me. I took several shots as the boat travelled from left to right but afterwards, when viewing the set, this composition was, in my opinion, the best of them all with the position of the boat balancing the lighthouse either side of the rising sun:
Image may be NSFW.
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Pentax | 1/60s | f/8 | ISO100 | 50mm | Tripod | 0.6 ND Grad
It just goes to show that, with all my planning and effort to get the shot, in the end the outcome was decided on luck alone. Even if I’d paid a boatman to sail in front of the island how difficult would it have been to coordinate it’s position in relation to the sun at that precise time?
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