For those of you that know me, you know that I am absolutely NOT a morning person, actually I’m quite the opposite. I entered SnapKnot’s contest in November to win either a Canon or Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 portrait lens which is also great for landscapes.  To my surprise I won.  The lens arrived on Thursday afternoon. 

On Friday morning, feeling ambitious and wanting to try out my new lens, I headed out to Surfside Pier on a blistering cold and windy morning to shoot the sunrise.  There is nothing more beautiful than capturing the sun rising over the ocean.  There were a few clouds at the horizon but not enough that would keep me from getting some great shots. Actually the cloud cover produced some interesting effects.  I arrived about half an hour earlier than the sunrise because that is when you can get some of the best colors.

Since I decided to shoot HD photography, I had bracketing set up on my camera so there would be 3 images for each subject I shot. It makes for some great shots but takes up space on your memory card.  

Even pros make mistakes.  I had taken maybe 100 shots when I noticed that one was very noisy.  I looked at the ISO and to my horror, it was set at 2500.  I have no idea what I had last shot that I needed such a high ISO. I changed it to 200 then continued shooting.

So there I am having fun with my new lens shooting the pier waiting for the sun to rise above the horizon and hoping the clouds would somehow disappear and trying to keep warm.  My fingers were frozen even with the gloves I was wearing.  It should not have been that cold in Myrtle Beach, I live in the sunny south, it is supposed to be warm!  

Just before the sun became visible, it lit up the clouds to make it look like some bomb exploded at the horizon.  So I was glad that there was a few clouds at the horizon.

About 20 minutes after the sun rose, I headed home to upload the photos into my computer before I headed to work.  

I took over 350 photos and doing them in HD, I knew it was going to take me some time to edit them.  When I finished, I had narrowed it down to about 40 photos. From those, Check out my Facebook page to see what I thought were my best photos from that shoot.