Dawn and dusk seem like basically the same thing from a photographer’s perspective, but they aren’t quite interchangeable.
I am a dawn shooter. I like to get up super early, make some art, go to a nice cafe to edit over scrambled eggs and coffee, then head home with an entire day still ahead of me.
But on a recent holiday in the Bay of Islands with my better half, dawn wasn’t practical. We prepaid for the hotel breakfast each morning, and that finishes at 9am. Sunrise is at 7:30. That gave me less than half an hour of good light before I had to be in the shower and racing down to the restaurant to pick through the bits of bacon nobody else wants.
So I spent a week as a dusk shooter.
The biggest difference is the time pressure. At dawn you can keep shooting as long as you want. There’s a whole day’s worth of light still to play with if you don’t get anything out of golden hour. But dusk has a hard time limit – when the sun is gone there’s no bringing it back.
On our second to last day in Waitangi, I was feeling the pressure a bit. I really wanted something epic to remember the trip by. I’d taken some nice stuff but nothing “wow”.
I started at the inlet by Te Tii Marae – the tide was coming in but it had a long way to go before the birds would be pushed close enough to shore. So I headed to the main beach to make an attempt to photograph some bathing gulls, but there were too many recreational beach goers and dog walkers disturbing the birds.
I went back to the inlet to see if the tide was any better…
Eventually I realised that nothing nearby was going to work. But by that time the light was seriously fading. I knew it was too late to try the next bay around. But I hopped in the car and raced around there anyway.
There were only minutes of daylight left. I hurried onto the beach, chased a white-faced heron that refused to cooperate, then tried to convince myself some gulls might save the evening. They didn’t.
The sun had disappeared below the nearby hills, the beach had slipped into shadow, and I’d more or less decided it was over. I started walking back towards the car. Then, half as an afterthought and half out of desperation, I looked around one more time. In a shallow pool behind me was a tūturiwhatu (New Zealand dotterel).
It felt too dark. Ordinarily I probably wouldn’t even have raised the camera. But the last glow of sunset was still catching the shallow water, turning a small patch of puddle into liquid gold.
I love this shot, and yet it wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t kept going after I’d effectively given up.
Something to reflect on.
birds.photos 