Rush Hour

As I drove into Cornwall on Friday night everything clouded over into a very thick soup. Thinking there was little point in even bothering with any photography my hopes were lifted a little whenever I reached the a hill top as I could see a slit forming at the horizon. As I got closer I was still unsure the sun was even coming anwywhere near the gap, but the glow got stronger and stronger.

Parking the car I struggled with wellies, tripod and camera bag running full tilt realising I had minutes to spare as I could now see the bottom of the sun. The beach has a stream running into it, the tide was too high and last year literally too the day the conditions were exactly the same; a blast of light through the clouds at high tide except this time my 5D got salt water in the DofField preview button and intermittently jammed on! I took three pictures and all were rubbish.

Well three pictures is all I got this time, because within twenty seconds of putting my tripod down all the glorious orange was gone. I just focused hyperfocally, set f16 and hit the cable release, making two exposures for the foreground and one for the sky. This is the only composition I had time to arrange. I feel it is cluttered and given another 5 minutes I could have got something far stronger and felt rather frustrated afterwards, but you make the most of what you can sometimes and I feel lucky enough to get this. Better come back again next year.

EOS 5D, 17-40 f4L @ 40mm f16 for 0.5secs ISO 400 (because I forgot to change it back to 100), a blend of two exposures.