Landscape

..to Shining Sea!

This is one of my pictures from over a year ago taken during a workshop led by Marc Adamus. After most of the group started their trek back from the beach at Oceanside, Oregon, I was trying to get the streaks in the receding waves. The colorful sunrise had by then started to decline. But if for nothing else, I needed that practice to get the timing right. The trick is relatively simple. You wait for the wave to go past you and as it is receding, open the shutter for a long exposure. In this case, 2 seconds.

Couple of things I would like to point out. I was there, that sea stack was there, the was the lone seabird sitting on it and the rest of the elements were there. But the edit is a creative one. Might not appeal to everyone and I am fine with that. For a lot of my images, I keep going back and forth for days, months and this case over a year. What looks good to my eyes today may not look the same a few days hence. Giving it a break sometimes helps. Which is why you hardly ever see pictures from me shared immediately from a trip.

Today, my friend Sam Karam posed an interesting question today on a Facebook Page he runs, “Do you prefer a Sunrise or Sunset?”

I love both but given a choice, I prefer a Sunrise. Here is why:

Sunsets are relatively predictable. You are already wide awake and can observe the changes coming throughout the day. You probably have already checked the weather and seen where the clouds are. May be some website or app has predicted a great sunset. For example, one of my photography friends checks live video from remote TV station cameras to see where the likelihood of a good sunset is.

On the other hand, sunsets are also relatively dirty air quality events. Especially in a large urban environment with all the vehicular pollution, smog and the warm air causing the air to be not so clean. Sometimes however these might cause spectacular sunsets like with the recent Saharan sand storm or smoke from the wildfires out west.

Sunrise on the other hand is a clean affair with less vehicles on the road and atmospheric pollutants blown away or settled down. Also the cooler night time temperatures can cause the air to clean up bit particularly when there is dew.

Sunrises also have the advantage of being less commonly photographed and you do not see nearly as many photographers as you do at sunset. My most recent experience with the “Valley View Sunrise” shot in Yosemite was a perfect example. There was no one else but the three of us and that composition with the sunstar coming up next to the El Capitan has not been shot before. Most people can stay up late but just hate waking up early and I am no exception. But why I do I like Sunrises over Sunsets all things being equal?

In the famous words of Forrest Gump:

“You never know what you're gonna get,"

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