Bayside: Sunrise Over Copano Bay

For a long time now I've been mulling over an idea to check out a part of Texas I hadn't visited before. A month ago, or thereabouts, I started planning a day long road trip from Austin to familiarize myself with Rockport, about 28 mi NE of Corpus Christi, and Galveston, another 190 mi up the Gulf coast.

In one of his movies, John Wayne bellows, "Slap some bacon on a biscuit and mount up, we're burnin' daylight!" (Or something to that effect.) I have pretty much the same feeling about "burnin' daylight" when I'm going on one of these drives, so ignoring my biorhythms, I left home at 3:26 intending to arrive at a Bayside boat ramp I'd scouted on Google Maps 5 or 10 min before sunrise. My planning was impeccable, arriving more than 15 min before the sun did. Thus, I'm able to report that the sun rose precisely on schedule.

As previously noted I'm familiarizing myself with a new Canon and I'm pleased to say that my brief study the day before and working out just what I needed to do for a successful early morning shoot as I made my way south from Austin was just what I needed. I was actually expecting a certain amount of trial and error before I got any usable images, so imagine my surprise when my plan yielded excellent results from the git-go.

The only things that gave me any grief were the birds. I used exposure compensation to keep the camera from overexposing the scene and that worked very well, keeping the shutter speed reasonably short. And the fact that some of the birds came out in focus in spite of their flapping made me very happy. As in most everything, planning is important, but you can't beat good luck.

Here's the first peek of Old Sol over Copano Bay. I thought I might have to share the experience with a few fishermen, but that just shows that Dave is the fisherman in my family. He could probably have told me exactly why I shouldn't have expected to see any such sportsmen. . . time of day, water temperature, whatever. But I wasn't missing the fishermen; I was quite content to have it all to myself.

Over the last few years, sunrises have reminded me of my photo excursions to Cape Hatteras, the very experiences that led me to expect trial and error this morning. But besides the Outer Banks, the morning's smooth sailing let my memories take me to other sunrises as well: in Athens, Rhodes and Thessaloniki; Naples and Rome; Paris, Cannes and Golf Juan; Barcelona and Rota. Sunrises at sea were nothing to sneeze at either.

Tomorrow you should to be able to find a few pictures from Rockport here. Have a great day.