unreachable

I have not been posting for a while now, but I think I'm back. I still have a ton of backlog but I'd like to start with a magical morning that happened fairly recently.

I'm part of small band of photography hobbyists with a keen interest on shooting sunsets and sunrises along Sarangani Bay (southern Mindanao). We are the ones who are on the road at ungodly hours, hoping for great light by the pineapple fields or in one of our spots along the coast.

when stars align

There is this set of beautiful mangroves in one of the spots we frequent in a town called Maasim some 30 kilometers away from General Santos. We particularly love mangroves, I mean who does not? They are undeniably beautiful.

But this set, they seemed to have purposely  distanced themselves from the "crowd" lining the shore. Unfortunately they are unreachable when the tide is high. We even can't get to them at "normal" tide levels, it has to be extremely low.

twins

Luck smiled upon us one weekend (actually just yesterday by the time I am posting this), and it sure was a huge smile Lady Luck gave us. You see a lot of things had to go right that dawn: its was to be low tide, low tide on a sunrise, low tide on a sunrise and on a weekend (oh yes we do have day jobs), and weather had to cooperate (it had been raining the previous days).

We also most missed it, dawn was already breaking but we were still a few minutes away. A few minutes late can ruin the shoot for a landscape photographer in the tropics where the colors can only a few seconds most of the time.

But that morning the sun seemed to have waited behind a wall of clouds. The wall was just perfect: too thick and it would have been a gray morning, too thin and there wouldn't have been enough to reflect the colors and the sun will be too bright.

spiky sunrise

Landscape photography had never been about gear for most of us who understand how fickle but generous nature can be sometimes. Its mostly about luck, and a lot of prayers. I swear that landscape  photography can make one a bit more religious :)

sunrise shooters