Summer’s Serenity, Seascape Photography

Eeeek! I can’t believe I haven’t officially shared this photograph with you yet! It’s one I made last summer, I guess things got a little crazy with my artist in residency at Beausoleil Island that it slipped through the blogging cracks. You probably recognize it from our May desktop calendar plus it was the cover image for both our 2013 wall calendar and 5×7 calendar.

I just wanted to share with you a few details from this early morning session in Bayfield. I’d seen these rocks during my location scout, and as you can see, they’re in the water. I remember the water level was up and down that week with rain and hot dry spells so I had no idea what I’d be in for when I showed up at the beach. Luckily the rock in the foreground was just at the water’s edge so I was still able to get some of the coarse beach sand in the bottom left, then a band of foggy water fading out into the smoothness of the lake. For those of you just tuning in you can click through to read all about how I create the look of calm water in my seascape photographs, hint – it’s done entirely in camera.

Here’s how my schedule looked that day:

2:50 am – wake up call

3:20 am – load car and leave for Bayfield, gear was packed the night before

4:45 am – arrive at the beach in Bayfield, set up and begin photographing in pre-sunrise light

5:48 am – sunrise, keep shooting

6:00 am – wrap shoot and head back to the studio

7:30 am – arrive back at the studio and unpack the car

7:45 am – begin downloading and backing up files

8:00 am – breakfast

~ Spent the morning tending to client orders ~

1:45 pm - choose selects, tweak images for colour, contrast, lightness, and darkness, process raw files

2:15 pm – retouch

3:00 pm – send test prints to the lab and archive final image

And here’s a little video so you can get a sense of how beautiful it was out on the beach {if you’re reading via email or RSS you’ll likely need to click through to our blog to see it}:

Days like these can be busy and long but they’re oh so rewarding I’d never trade them in. Plus, it’s awesome to start my day on the beach!