Stayed local again this morning before I venture further afield after the new year. As I stay in Kirkcaldy, I decided on the old pier which I have photographed many times before.

I arrived about 45 minutes before sunrise and walked along the coastal path towards Kinghorn only to find that there was no way to access where I wanted to shoot. I knew the tide was out before hand and wanted to get a closer image of the pier. There was a large steam flowing down the extremely slippery rocky surface and I had left my wellies in the boot of my car. I was so disappointed as there was a beautiful cloud formation in my viewing angle with terrific light and colour bouncing of the stones and walls. I took a couple of shots just with the polariser on to take some glare away from the water but the overall scene is just too overcrowded as you can see in the image below.

I made a quick decision to leave and head back the way I came and access the pier from the other side! But as luck would have it, the beautiful light disappeared very quickly, howeverI was not totally disheartened as there are so many shades and colourings that morning light will bring and I was still waiting for the sun to rise. 

Mistake number 2!! I came across this lonely rock covered in bright green moss looking towards the pier so I decided to take a chance. Out with the camera and tripod alone with multiple filters to balance the scene. ND grad for the sky and as I wanted a somewhat different image, I stuck on the 10 stop big stopper to get plenty of movement in the sky. So, with the remote shutter in hand, I went for it! locked up the shutter using a remote trigger then checked my exposure time on an app on my phone to find that the correct exposure time would have been half an hour!! Not what I thought. The sky was getting lighter by the minute so that would effectively reduce the time, but this is not what I had in mind. I decided to let it carry out time and do a bit of guess work in timing. 

It’s not my usual kind of shot but think it works quite well.

My next couple of shots were more planned out! For the first image, I went for a high contrast black and white using more sensible camera settings of a 1 minute exposure using f8 for sharpness with a 2 stop graduated filter to balance the sky, and a polariser to cut the glare off the water.

The final image was very similar settings, but the sun had just come up so I just couldn't ignore the wonderful light, it really lit up the whole sky with a warm glow.