The reason why you should always go..

Sometimes as a photographer we can get frustrated when we drive for miles at ungodly hours to photograph a sunset or sunrise only to get there and the sky does nothing. You come home empty handed and empty hearted. When I’m feeling like this I have to remind myself that not all sunsets/sunrises can be amazing otherwise we wouldn’t appreciate the really good ones. And then I start to think about the crazy sunsets/sunrises that I have witnessed and how lucky I was that I did drag myself out of bed or jumped in the car and drove through peak hour traffic when I could have easily cozied up on the couch with a cup of chai tea or hit the snooze button and drifted off to sleep again.

One particular example of this was a road trip that we did back in 2012 around Tasmania. We were staying at Coles Bay in some beautiful accommodation, it was a blustery cold winters day and all I felt like doing was sitting by the fire and watching the kangaroos feeding on the grass outside near the beach. But I had wanted to photograph Friendly Beaches Tasmania for so long after seeing the pure white sand and aqua blue water in a picture a few years earlier.

It was getting close to sunset so with a huff I threw my camera bag in the back of the car and off we went. The sky was looking ominous and so was my mood. I remember complaining to my husband that there was probably no point. Its going to start raining any minute and with eternal optimism he turned to me and said as he always does “You never know!”

We arrived at the beach to this view:

I really didn’t think anything exciting was going to happen. I thought the cloud was way too heavy for any colour to come through and that it was about to pour with rain at any minute. But we were here and we were leaving the next day so this was my only chance. I had nothing to loose by seeing what was going to happen. So I set up my camera on my tripod, threw on some filters and waited. It was a really pretty beach so apart from being absolutely frozen by the wind I was having a good time exploring the beach while we waited for sunset. Then suddenly I saw a slight shade of pink out in the distance so I started clicking away and what looked like a photo shoot that was going to be a bust turned into this:

If you are wondering why the water looks so different, its because I chose to do a long exposure so that the water was all smoothed out. I was gobsmacked with how beautiful the sky turned as the sun was dropping below the horizon. As you can imagine my grumpy huff of a mood turned into one of exhilaration. I wasn’t thinking about being back at our accommodation watching the kangaroos. Thats was the furthest thing from my mind. I was just staring in amazement at what was unfolding before me. Imagine if I had stayed back at the room, I wouldn’t be telling you this story right now or showing you this picture…and that is the reason why YOU SHOULD ALWAYS GO! I love this picture and what it stands for so much that I have a gigantic glass print of it hanging in my living room.

 Location:

Friendly Beaches, Coles Bay Road, Coles Bay, Tasmania

Settings:

Camera: Canon 600D, Sigma 10-20mm Lens

F5.6 @ 60 seconds

ISO 100

ND and Grad ND Filter.

Have you ever been to Friendly Beaches in Tasmania or had a similar experience to this? I would love to hear about it in the comments below! 🙂