Shaw's Cove Sunrise
When the alarm goes off at 4:30 AM and you live 40 minutes away from Laguna Beach, it really is a roll of the dice to see if you will come back home with anything resembling a decent sunrise. On this particular morning, I stuck my head out the door and peered at the high clouds above and thought I might get lucky. A quick look at the satellite shot on the NWS website showed that the clouds looked a bit broken to the East, and that was enough to get me in the car headed down to Laguna.
When I arrived at the end of Laguna Canyon road, it looked like a wall of fog sitting just off shore and my heart sank. What a wasted effort. In spite of what looked like a big fat nothing in terms of a sunrise, I headed down to Shaw's cove because....well...you never know what you're going to get. When I got out of the car, I could see that there was a bit of light mist, but really no fog to speak of. I began shooting several different spots of the beach during blue hour anxiously waiting for the sky to light up. And I waited....and waited....and...nothing.
Then suddenly I saw a tiny bit of pink in one corner of the sky. Then a bit more. And suddenly, the entire sky lit up, and I was trying to shoot everywhere at once. Shortly after taking the earlier shot shown below, I raced back across the beach to try to grab as much reflected light off of the beach and waves as possible.
For the past several weeks, this type of a sunrise has been increasingly rare in Laguna. It's either been fog for weeks at a time, or clear skies without the smallest wisp of a cloud. My kids think that I'm nuts for waking up that early on a weekend, but every once in a while, the sun actually comes out from behind the clouds and for 10 to 15 glorious minutes, it is DEFINITELY worth it.
William McIntosh Photography | 500px | Twitter
Shaw's Cove Sunrise
When the alarm goes off at 4:30 AM and you live 40 minutes away from Laguna Beach, it really is a roll of the dice to see if you will come back home with anything resembling a decent sunrise. On this particular morning, I stuck my head out the door and peered at the high clouds above and thought I might get lucky. A quick look at the satellite shot on the NWS website showed that the clouds looked a bit broken to the East, and that was enough to get me in the car headed down to Laguna.
When I arrived at the end of Laguna Canyon road, it looked like a wall of fog sitting just off shore and my heart sank. What a wasted effort. In spite of what looked like a big fat nothing in terms of a sunrise, I headed down to Shaw's cove because....well...you never know what you're going to get. When I got out of the car, I could see that there was a bit of light mist, but really no fog to speak of. I began shooting several different spots of the beach during blue hour anxiously waiting for the sky to light up. And I waited....and waited....and...nothing.
Then suddenly I saw a tiny bit of pink in one corner of the sky. Then a bit more. And suddenly, the entire sky lit up, and I was trying to shoot everywhere at once. Shortly after taking the earlier shot shown below, I raced back across the beach to try to grab as much reflected light off of the beach and waves as possible.
For the past several weeks, this type of a sunrise has been increasingly rare in Laguna. It's either been fog for weeks at a time, or clear skies without the smallest wisp of a cloud. My kids think that I'm nuts for waking up that early on a weekend, but every once in a while, the sun actually comes out from behind the clouds and for 10 to 15 glorious minutes, it is DEFINITELY worth it.
William McIntosh Photography | 500px | Twitter