*Fujifilm X-T4 + XF 16mm f/1.4 R WR: 120s, f/11, ISO160*

Continuing in the tradition of years’ past, I met up with a few photography colleagues to shoot the sunrise on New Year’s day. The parking lot was still locked so we had to find the nearest street parking.

*Fujifilm X-T4 + XF 8mm f/1.4 R WR: 10s, f/11, ISO800*

The pre-sunrise “burn” was already peaking with its bright orange glow as we walked toward the beach so I decided not to overthink. I headed straight to “the island” which is one of my favorite spots at this particular beach. It had been some time since the last time I’d been here. This time I had a new lens with me, so I reached for that one first:

*Fujifilm X-T4 + XF 8mm f/3.5 R WR: 120s, f/11, ISO800*

After seeing the result, I liked the amount of foreground the ultra-wide included, but I prefer the “zoomed-in” perspective of the XF 16mm lens more because the palm trees have a greater presence in the photo, and the clouds fill the sky more dramatically. Also, I lack the creative filter tools for the XF 8mm lens that I have for the XF 16mm lens, so I switched them for the final photo.

I got the “where are you?” text from the guys so I started making my way back toward the parking lot to meet up. But on the way back, I stopped because I liked the view of the beach, so I decided to squeeze one more photo in. I tested a few compositions before settling on this one. A faint rainbow started to appear as the exposure ticked on, and with it came large droplets of rain leaving water droplets to slide down the oleophobic Nisi glass filter which I frantically squeezed my Giottos Rocket Air Blaster on so they wouldn’t show up in the long exposure. I turned the camera off with about 30+ seconds remaining to end the exposure prematurely. I learned in post-processing that the EXIF data still kept 2-minute original exposure data instead of the truncated time. I decided in post-processing to convert the exposure to black and white because the hotel architecture is less distracted-from without the color present.

01.09.2024