Fire in the Sky.

Getting up for sunrise always seems like such a good idea, until you actually have to do it.  Even though I'm a morning person, dragging yourself out of bed at 4 45 am is a feat in itself.  After arguing with myself for a solid 5 minutes (not out loud, c'mon now), I was convinced I would have a photogenic sunrise and crawled out of bed.  I brought both camera bodies and set up right near the end of Manly to get the sun rising over the crest of the headland.  And as my luck would have it, it was raining!  Not like the intense downpour rain, but just enough to sprinkle annoying dots on my exposed lenses.  So if you can imagine me set up, trying to hold my t shirt over my camera on the tripod taking a time lapse, wiping off the lens with the t shirt frequently (not recommended, you can see me doing it in the video below), and taking photos as the sun is shooting light rays through the storm clouds all at the same time, I'm sure it was kinda funny to watch.  There was a decent swell, which brought quite a few surfers out for the dawn barrels.  What's next?  A solid 3 hour nap, editing, more relaxing beach time, a skate up to watch the Bower doing its thing when the swell comes in (its this point break on the headland that comes up real shallow on these massive rocks, and I watched surfers and bodyboarders alike get slammed and break boards while getting cheeky barrels and sick airs), and ended the day getting cooked an awesome stir fry dinner.  Perfect day.

short time lapse due to rain (you can see me in and out wiping the lens) :(  last of these for a bit, my camera is taking a beating.

Manly Sunrise from Stephen Govel on Vimeo.

so early... :)

the light in the morning was crazy, just streaking out of the clouds into the ocean.  the photo on the left has some minor adjustments done to make the light rays pop a bit more because it could not be done in one exposure :)