Thirty Minutes of Bliss- A Guilford Sunrise Story
Hello darkness my old friend. Another trip into the unknown again. On the road on an early Saturday morning and a stop at a new location for Sunrise. I am along the shore today so no long walks through the woods. It’s 5:00am, another hour or so for full Sunup, it’s still dark. It’s a nice 18 degrees Fahrenheit this morning so it’s time to ready up with the cold weather gear and don the head lamp so I can see. Looks like the actual beach area open to the public is a standard sand beach about 140 yds long with houses on one end and a rocky out cropping on the other. I am interested in the area past the out cropping this morning, so off I go to look around with my little light.
I see interesting shapes and terrain and what looks like a little dock area in the distance. I also see little areas where the skunks like to dart in and out of looking for scraps of food but no little furballs today. The tide is out and there is plenty of mud and muck along this side of the jetty. Though it’s freezing out the mud is freshly exposed and very pliant, I make sure not to spoil any potential scenes with my footprints.
I make it down to what looks to be a newly erected dock area compared to what was on google maps. There is a no trespassing sign on the dock. I quickly look to see if the dock points straight out to Faulkner Lighthouse but sadly it does not. It appears the public side of the beach ends where the kayak holding area ends. There is plenty to work with today and the dark skies begin to lighten ever so slightly. Time to go back to all the spots I have marked for exploration today and prep for Sun and skies arrival.
We have good looking clouds this morning and plenty of them moving over me and out to the horizon. It looks like it might be one of those Winter mornings, the ones that give you that majestic purple hue that I only seem to find in the Winter months. I sit on my little stool and wait a little longer, wish I brought my thermos of coffee this morning, oh well. The light is finally building, time to put on my tunes and hit the spots.
The first scene is an overall of what I am presented with today. Straight ahead to the horizon is the calmness of the sound, a jetty and the muddy shell filled shore. Faulkner light is off to the right with its light slowly blinking.
Moving down a few yards is this single piling still anchored in the muck, leaning to one side. It’s of interest to me just for the fact that it’s still here, still standing. It’s obvious it has been through a few rough seasons, yet it remains defiant, bent but not broken. Standing vigil over the serene waters, reflecting the morning hues.
Shifting over ninety degrees to the right to catch the post, rock and dirt all receiving a nice dose of side lighting. Off to the left there is the newish dock and newer pilings in contrast to this solitary post. The little Motif (fishing shack) indeed looks little in frame from this vantage point.
Now with the light growing more intense I move back to the original area and move closer in to capture all the many points of light reflecting off the rocks and mud.
The clouds are creating a soft v formation, time to move on to the top of the jetty to take the obligatory shot off into the distance. The shore is bathed in a soft purple hue, all signs point toward a burner of a morning.
I move further down towards the dock now. There is a smooth undulating patch of packed sand caught between the rough and tumble rocks and muddy sea grass deposits, beyond that the slight ripples of the sound and rippling in the sky.
Moving a few yards to the left and then facing left a grouping of large rocks on the shore begin to light up as the intensity of the sky grows.
I run back to my crocked pole. The intensity of the sky is like the afterburners from a jet, all the elements look like they are in its after wash being blown back by the force of its expelled energy.
The sky is at its peak now, I turn towards the horizon where the light is it’s most intense. Waters still calm with just the slightest of ripples moving across it, just as gentle as the ripples left in the mud from the earlier receding waters. Light beautifully reflected in all the surfaces.
Not much longer now before the Sun breaks the plane. I move to a pool of water captured and frozen within the marsh grasses, a reminder that we are still in the grasp of winter if my complaints about the temperature were not enough to convince you.
I have one more spot I had scoped out to capture. Back to one of the potential areas I was worried about for a skunk run in when it was dark. A small dried-up channel leading out to the end of the pier and sound. One landscape, one portrait. Now back to where I want to be for the Sunrise.
The magenta tones have all retreated to the cloud cover behind me. The horizon is now a swath of golden tones. I am not sure I am going to get my Sun star today, there is a thin line of clouds along the bottom of the sky. I take one vertical then prep the horizontal for an F22 Sunstar. As I took the shot, I wasn’t sure if I got it as the Sun came up between two houses. Looking at it closeup on the LCD showed I got a little one. Unfortunately, there would not be a second attempt as it went right up into the clouds obscuring it from view. That was an intense 30 minutes of photography, which would not have been possible without the 45 minutes of stalking around in the twilight hours beforehand. Now I sit down on my little stool and take in the Sun as it rises through the clouds and as more clouds head towards horizon. It would not be to long before the morning turned from a Sunny one back to the Wintery gray for most of the remainder of the day.
