Dawn

There seems to be a trend emerging here. Checking back on my Clear Lake posts from last year I realized it took me until our 5th day in to get up at the Crack of Ridiculous to capture the rising sun (see Good Morning, the first of which happened to be my winning shot for the 2010 Riding Mountain National Park photo contest). And so it was yesterday that my eyes popped open at around 4:45am and I set out to the shore.

The morning was shaping up to be beautful, photographically speaking. The mosquitoes, however, were the stuff of nightmares. Steeling my resolve I set forth as I had an idea in my head from the previous day. Vantage point: rocky stairs down to the beach. Reality didn't quite fit the vision, but I still find the end result interesting (if not a bit brooding).

While shooting this I noticed what proved to be a more interesting perspective looking across the shoreline from the steps. It didn't hurt that the clouds had thinned and the dawn sun set the sky ablaze. With the help of a neutral density grad off-kilter to hold back the sky and a 3-stop ND filter to slow down the exposure (note the smooth water and streaky clouds) this is what popped up on my display after about a minute.

In the words of Po from Kung-Fu Panda (which we enjoyed this week at what I believe is the only log-cabin theater on the continent)... "Skadoosh!". With only a bit of refinement in post what you see above is pretty much straight out of camera. Mosquitoes be damned, this is a killer sunrise.

And with that in the can, and a smile on my face, I hustled over to the pier to try and capture that light from a new perspective. Unfortunately it was changing quickly, and by the time I made it to my next locale, and navigated a mess of seagull "waste", it was gone.

That's not to say the final shot of the morning wasn't cool, though.

After about an hour and untold mosquitoe nibbles it was time to go back to bed. Mission accomplished.