Sunrise at the Pier | Pismo Beach, CA

The beach is magical first thing in the morning.

It isn’t often that I get out of the house for a sunrise shoot, but when I do I am usually sleep deprived richly rewarded. This particular day in Pismo Beach, CA was no exception. From the beach I watched dolphins frolic and whales breach. Seriously.

And then the sun rose, turning the tips of the clouds pink where the sun hit them from above. It was breathtaking. In between shots I would simply sit and observe.

I opted to focus my shoot on the sunrise for two reasons.

1. I simply didn’t have a long enough lens to make a decent capture of the whales & dolphins. With my 24-105mm lens I would have only caught far-away dark spots and I’d have to explain that yes, that is a whale…or dolphin. Not much better than those out there taking photos with their cell phones. (Insert rolling of eyes & shaking of head, here.)
2. See below…

Breathtaking, no? And definitely worth waking up for.

Capture & Processing Notes

All four of these photographs were captured with my tripod mounted Canon 6D and 16-35mm lens. Each photo is comprised of five auto-bracketed frames and processed  in Lightroom, Photoshop and Aurora HDR 2017.

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