When Life Gives You Lemons…

Whenever I visit Florida, I always try to go to the beach to photograph the sunrise.  Some of my favorite pictures are sunrise beach shots.

I was in Florida for two days last week, and so I went down to the beach both days to shoot the sunrise.  Alas, the clouds did not cooperate with my plans, as there was overcast weather pretty much the entire time I was there.

My weather app showed that there wasn’t going to be a decent sunrise.  I considered sleeping in instead, but in the end, I went anyway since I’ve known my app to be wrong sometimes. 

Day 1

Sure enough, when I got to the beach at Lake Worth, I saw immediately that there was essentially no chance for a good sunrise.  A wall of dark clouds stood firm on the horizon, preventing the sun from shining through.  Nonetheless, I decided to take the opportunity to try other things.  Among the things I tried that day was a long exposure photograph.

 

"Patience"

To achieve this shot, I left the shutter open for three minutes.  Because the shutter was open for such a long time, any motion in the water was blurred out, leaving this highly deceptive image of a peaceful and calm ocean when the ocean was anything but peaceful and calm that morning.

Day 2

The second (and last) morning there was only marginally better.  While there was still a wall of clouds on the horizon, it didn’t seem as thick.

This time around, I decided to try capturing waves.  The great thing about wave photos is that every one is different.  You could literally shoot a photo every second and never come away with the same shot twice. 

Here are two of the shots I got that morning.

 

"Incoming"
"Receding Waves"

Eventually, however, my patience paid off on Day 2.  Shortly after when sunrise should have been, the sun peaked out from the clouds.  I quickly rushed to grab a shot:

"Sun, Surf, Sand & Sandpipers"

Although I did, in the end, manage to get a sunrise photo (of sorts), I still managed to make good use of the time when the sun wasn’t present.  True, I didn’t get a sunrise shot, but I did manage to produce some other nice-look images that I would not have otherwise made.


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When Life Gives You Lemons…

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