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You know… sometimes ya’ just get lucky. That’s totally what I was thinking after my sunset shoot a while back. See, a few weeks ago my buddy Brian Matiash was visiting from Portland, OR and I wanted to take him out shooting for sunset. He’s a good buddy of mine and we always have a great time shooting. But a few hours before, the sky wasn’t looking so good (kinda just blah), and we started to talk ourselves in to just heading to grab a beer instead. It was a long day, and, well… a beer, some food, and just relaxing sounded pretty good. But as it got closer to us leaving the office, the sky was looking better. So I said to Brian, “Hey, it’s Florida. You just never know how quickly some weather can roll in and make for some awesome sunsets”. So we decided to head out to a location that I’d only been to once before on Honeymoon Island in Dunedin, FL.

It turned out to be a REALLY good decision. First off, I’d only been to this spot once and I thought the wooden pilings were really going to be the star of the photo here. But I’d never been to it in low tide so I never even knew that all of these rocks existed. And since it was low tide, you could see the rocks as well as the still pools of water that were trapped in them. And almost as soon as we got to the parking lot it was starting to look good. The clouds were forming and there were even some thunderstorms around which can really make for some dramatic photos. Now, I’ve shot around here enough to know that the sun can go behind a bank of clouds and totally kill the almost-awesome-but-not-really sunset so I wasn’t totally sold that we’d get a good shot. But that’s landscape photography right? It’s more about luck and putting yourself in the right spot enough times to eventually walk away with a good photo.

Well, as sunset got closer, the clouds were just amazing. They changed every 60 seconds. There were dark clouds, there were colorful clouds, there were God beams shining through, etc… At one point, there was even this reddish/orange color/tint on everything. I even said to Brian, “Dude this is crazy! See how red it just got?”, forgetting that Brian is actually color blind (ooops) 🙂 Anyway, the photo below is one of my favorites from the evening. Usually, when shooting beaches, I’m a twilight person – meaning I typically don’t care for many beach photos with the sun up. I’m usually shooting my favorites when the sun is below the horizon. But this one stood out to me. The sunstar, the rocks, the silky waves from the longer exposure.

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honeymoon-island

[tw-divider]Photo Details[/tw-divider]
Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
Lens: Canon 16-35mm
Aperture: f/16
Shutter Speed: 2.5 sec
ISO: 100
Filter: Tiffen 2-stop ND
Tripod: Really Right Stuff TVC-33 w/ BH-55 Ballhead
Location (for any of you FL residents or visitors): Honeymoon Island: Dunedin, FL (map: http://mattyk.me/1nP6L6r)

Anyway, as I said in the beginning of the post – Sometimes ya’ just get lucky. That evening was one of those evenings. The right tide, with the run weather, clouds, etc… made for one of the prettiest sunsets I’ve photographed in a long time. And I still even got to go have my beer and food with Brian after 🙂 Have a good one!

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