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Florida Sunrise

Posted on July 18, 2012 // 1 Comment
Florida Sunrise

Florida Sun­rise — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Florida Sun­rise

I am a few weeks away from going back to my favorite place to watch a Florida sun­rise. Sanibel/​Captiva is one of those places where you can just give in to relax­ation. The most adven­tur­ous sport on the island is search­ing the beach for seashells. Even that sounds like too much work for me. Besides, what the hell am I going to do with those damn seashells once I find them? I have a sim­ple rule about nature. If it’s out­side of my home, I leave it alone. I have no desire for tro­phies of my adven­tures — out­side of my pho­tographs. Oh, the other part of my rule of nature is that I get to kill any­thing that ven­tures into my home unin­vited. Cock­roaches beware! That said, I was nice enough to trap the opos­sum that found his way inside a few years ago.

None of that has any­thing to do with a Florida sun­rise, though. I’m of the opin­ion that the best place to see a Florida sun­rise is at the beach. First, the beaches are gen­er­ally deserted at sun­rise. Peo­ple tend to party at the beach into the wee hours, so they’re not really coher­ent to see a Florida sun­rise over the ocean.

Sec­ond, there’s less wait­ing involved for a Florida sun­rise com­pared to a Florida sun­set. You show up early for a sun­set and you have to wait for the sun to sink down. It starts slow and gets bet­ter. Nat­u­rally, a Florida sun­rise starts off great and grad­u­ally gets worse. It’s much eas­ier to leave when you know that the show is over. There’s always hope for some­thing bet­ter with a sun­set, so you spend more time wait­ing it out. Not so with a Florida sun­rise. Once you know the light sucks, it’s OK to leave and have break­fast somewhere.

Finally, I just seem to like the clouds with a Florida sun­rise bet­ter. They have height, but they’re also wispier (if that’s actu­ally a word). We have some pretty thick, heavy clouds dur­ing sun­set in Florida this time of year. It’s often rain­ing in the late after­noon. Morn­ings are pretty easy going, though. Which, come to think of it, is one more advan­tage of shoot­ing a Florida sun­rise. The rush-​hour traf­fic hasn’t really got­ten in the way yet. That’s not much of a prob­lem on the island, though. It’s just me and a cou­ple of pel­i­cans out there.

Filed Under: Captiva, Florida, Travel // Tagged: , , , ,
About William

Author, Photographer and IT Manager. I have a fondness for chocolate. I also own Suburbia Press and Aperture vs Lightroom.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Pixie.Dust.Pictures Scott Bax­ter

    Beau­ti­ful sun­rise image — love the way the pink clouds seem to sug­gest a ques­tion mark.

    It is true, of course, that one rea­son sun­rise is a great time to shoot — sub­stan­tially fewer peo­ple about to get into a shot — is also the rea­son it can be so hard to make your­self get out and shoot at that time. Few peo­ple, includ­ing pho­tog­ra­phers, really want to get up so early. I’ve got an oppor­tu­nity here that I’m try­ing to shoot, and I need to do it soon if it is going to hap­pen. The old capi­tol build­ing here in Tal­la­has­see recently under­went an exte­rior rehab in which work crews stripped many decades of oxi­da­tion off the cop­per cladding on the dome. I have never seen the dome look­ing copper-​colored in my 44-​year life­time, and once it gets oxi­dized again, I may not ever see it that color again. The build­ing faces east, and I real­ized that it might make a great image to pho­to­graph the build­ing with sun­rise light hit­ting the dome. But fam­ily demands a lot of my time on week­ends, and it is a 30-​mile drive one way from home to down­town Tal­la­has­see. The build­ing is just a few blocks from where I work. The obvi­ous solu­tion would be to come in extra early, get my shots, and go to work from there. But I’m so ter­ri­bly hot-​natured, it would mean I’d be going to work absolutely drenched in sweat. I might just have to inflict this on my co-​workers for a day, though — I have no idea how long it will be before the dome looks essen­tially as it did prior to the restora­tion. Not sure I want to bet on wait­ing two or three months for sub­stan­tially cooler weather.