There is nothing like killing two birds with one stone....and I definitely don't mean that literally!A couple of weeks ago I had a 9am meeting down at the Gold Coast. So instead of just driving down there for the meeting and then heading back up to Brisbane, I set my alarm for 3.50am instead. This would allow me to shoot the sunrise, grab a quick bite to eat and then go to my meeting.On driving out of the carport at 4am, I noticed that there was quite a bit of fog around. So much so, that I nearly changed my plans there and then. You see, I've been wanting to catch Brisbane city shrouded in fog from the lookout at Mt Coot-tha for a long time. I've come close once, but it was only a thin coverage. This fog was thick. And it was thick. So thick that visibility was down to only 150m in places and there was delays at the airport. However, I decided to stick with my first plan and continued to hear south towards Currumbin, and Currumbin Rock in particular. My success rate down at the Gold Coast is pretty low, but the forecast conditions looked to be in my favour for some nice colour at sunrise.Arriving about 1 1/2 hours before sunrise, the sky was still pretty dark, with the crescent moon having already set a couple of hours earlier. It was time for some long exposures!After scrambling over the rocks for a bit, I found my composition with the skyscrapers and bright lights of Surfers Paradise framed between the rocks. The high cloud added some nice movement to the scene over the 8 minute exposure. The nearby street lights provided some nice illumination on the foreground as well as on Currumbin Rock itself.CurrumbinPre-Dawn at Currumbin Rock with the bright lights of Surfers Paradise in the background By now, the sky to the east was stating to lighten, so I moved to the other side of the rock to capture the colours of the approaching dawn. A 4 minute exposure later, and I could tell it was going to be a lovely sunrise.The other sidePre-dawn colours starting to show at Currumbin Rock While waiting for my 4 minute exposure, I started to look around at what else I could shoot, or what other compositions I could find. With a little more light available to me now, I could see that the tide was quite low. A quick check of the tide times, and it was confirmed that it was pretty much low tide. The wet sand behind me would provide some awesome reflections of the sunrise.Thankfully (or so I thought at the time) I had my gumboots on, so I didn't even have to worry about either a) taking my shoes off, or b) getting my feet wet. Oh how wrong was I to be!As it normally happens, just the right composition, just the right angle is just that little bit further away than you originally thought. So, I had to go into the water slightly to get the angle that I wanted, and then wait for the waves to recede to get the reflection that I was chasing. No problems I thought, I've got my gumboots on....Well, as we all know, every now and then a slightly larger wave pushes through. It was the first of these waves that just splashed over the top of my boots and wet my pants. By the end of the session, there was more of the ocean in my boots then out of it!But it didn't matter, because I was getting the shots that I wanted!Pastel ReflectionsThe sky filled with the soft pastels of sunrise, and the wet sand did the rest. It really was a beautiful morning on the beach, and the local surfers thought so too. Sun BurstThe sun pokes out from behind the rock as more surfers hit the water
