Location

Those of you who read my journals know that last week I spent some time in the south of Portugal with the sole intention of shooting sunrises and sunsets.

Lagos has beautiful beaches with the added advantage that they are also some of the only eastward facing beaches in Portugal, and so the only place where the sun rises above the sea in the summer.

I'd spent 11 hours in the car driving down from Lisbon, going along every small country road I could find looking for decent locations to shoot in the spring when the fields will be in bloom again, and after arriving at 11.30pm I really didn't want to get up at 5.30am the next day for a sunrise.

I'm glad I did though, because it was a really special morning:
I arrived at the beach at 6.15 and could see the sky beginning to lighten, already with splashes of pink, and I walked down the 100+ steps that lead to Praia Camilo.

The great thing about shooting at sunrise is that even in the most popular tourist destinations, you can have the place to yourself and witnessing a spectacular sunrise in solitude like this was pretty special.

To be honest, photography recently has been pretty laboured for me, I've been forcing shots to come and don't feel as though I've really managed to capture the moment on my camera as it appeared to me in my head for a while now.

So when this wonderful sunrise started, I felt relief at finally getting great conditions, and nervous that I wouldn't be able to capture them to my satisfaction.

Technique

I picked a spot a few meters out to sea where there were rocks breaking the waves. It was tricky because the sand beneath the water was too soft to hold the camera steady against the waves for long exposures, so I wedged the tripod against some rocks. The water was about 30-40cm deep, and no, salt water and sand are not good for your tripod. After this week I've spent around 2 hours taking the tripod apart, cleaning it, oiling it and putting it back together again

I took spot meter readings from the sky and from the rocks to get an average reading and work out how much filtering I'd need to get the brightness of the sky down to balance with the foreground rocks. The difference was 5 stops, so I used a Lee 0.9 3 stop hard ND graduated filter with the graduation line on the horizon, and a Cokon 2 stop soft grad. I didn't want to use 2 hard grads as it would have made a much more obvious line where the filters started.

At this time of day the light changes incredibly fast and there is a constant need to change exposure settings and filters. This shot was taken just a few minutes before the sun rose above the horizon.

I also didn't want a really long exposure as anything over 4 seconds takes all the detail out of the water. Sometimes this looks great, but on this occasion I wanted to show the movement of the water beneath the camera. So I chose a shutter speed of 3 seconds and selected an aperture to match.

The shot was taken with the waves receding away from me, as I wanted the movement of the water around the rocks to create lines that would lead into the picture.

Post Capture

The colours are exactly as they came out of the camera, I haven't tweaked contrast or saturation or colour at all. I'd set the colour temperature at 6100K in camera, so I didn't need to adjust the white balance in post either.
The only post processing was to clean some sensor dust off, as well as a few drops of water from the bottom. Then I've sharpened it in Apple Aperture, put a frame and title in PS and then resized it and converted from RAW to JPEG (in Aperture again).

Taken in Lagos, Algarve Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20 | Nikon cable release
Lee 0.9 Hard ND grad (3 stop) | Cokin Z Pro ND4 (2 stop)
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
3 seconds | f20 | 10mm | 6100K

Converted from RAW in Apple Aperture