Sandy Point State Park At Dawn

On March 17th I woke up early with a desire to chase the sunrise.  I have been wanting a sunrise over the Chesapeake Bay.  I decided to try out a new location and after a bit of 3am research I settled on trying Sandy Point State Park by the base of the bay bridge.  I have been over the bay bridge many times but have never stopped at the park.

So the photo dog and I headed out from my house at 4:45am in order to make the drive and to get breakfast on the run (sometimes I think the only reason I get early is McDonald's breakfast).  We finally arrived at McDonalds after a brief detour to a phantom McDonalds on the grounds of the Naval Academy (my normally infallible GPS let me down).  As we arrived for breakfast the sky was already beginning to lighten in the east.  Luckily we were on the bay side of Annapolis and we were making great time.

We finally arrived at the gates of the park at 6:35am only to find our next problem.  A sign that said the park opened for general use at 7:00am and was only open early for fishermen and boaters.  So a dilemma...  do I wait and miss the beginning of the sunrise or do I go in early and send Sparky into the water after a fish so that I count as a fisherman?  I chose the latter.  I paid my money and crept quietly into the park.  I parked my car right next to another car, a fisherman I supposed.  I grabbed my camera, tripod, and dog and headed across the exposed grounds and made for the beach.  I finally arrived at the beach without drawing any attention.  I sat down on the sand looking out into the water feeling quite uninspired.  I actually thought about just not taking any pictures and simply enjoying being alive as only watching a sunset can make you feel.  But as the sky began to turn colors it sparked my creativity.

I began moving around finding the right scattering of rocks to take the first picture.  I used a 5 second exposure to get the soft water around the rocks while not over exposing the brightening sky.  Next I moved on to a jetty as the sky and water turned a pinkish purple color.  I had to use the Neutral Density Filter to extend my shutter speed to 30 seconds to get the soft effects on the water.  I also had to use the Graduated Neutral Density Filter to keep the sky from burning out.  Believe it or not the pink color is natural, it was not enhanced by the use of any color filters.  Finally the sun broke the horizon and it became time to line up the disk of the sun with the Sandy Point Shoal Lighthouse.  I pulled out the 500mm lens to get this shot of the lighthouse and the sun.  This image was taken with no filters and ended up being 1/3200 second to keep the sun from bleeding into the surrounding pixels and creating a white mess instead of a crisp white circle.

In the course of moving around and lining up the lighthouse I found out who had the other car that I had parked next to.  Turned out I had a fellow photographer shooting the morning!  And I also came to realize that he had already claimed one of the best spots for shooting.  Luckily it was a big beach and there were plenty of things to make interesting foregrounds besides the long narrow rock jetty that arched right at the lighthouse.  I will get that picture next time...