I almost missed this shot. It looked like a shutdown during an overcast sunset. There was no color in the sky with only minutes until official sunset, and I had given up and gone to sit on a log and just take in the scenery. I left my camera on the tripod ready to go, just in case, but was not expecting anything. Even if there was going to be a sunset, I had no plans of shooting the Wizard’s Hat again, as I already had so many amazing images of this spectacular sea stack formation.
While sitting on the log, suddenly I started to see a crack on the horizon to the North. I stood up. Next, I was running with my camera and tripod as fast as I could. The Wizard’s Hat being the closest thing to me, I sank the tripod in the sand and started shooting. On my first exposure, I had picked up some color. Was it going to happen? I slid in a 3-stop reverse density filter and took another shot. Alright, here we go. Not quite enough filter for the balance, so I slid a one-stop graduated split neutral density filter over the reverse just as the sun snuck under the clouds. Pow! Nailed that! Wow! What a sun star! Two clicks later, the sun sank into the horizon. I was in shock. I literally almost missed one of the best shots of my career.
Even though this image does not have a strong or obvious leading line, it does have a couple of subtle lines that draw the viewer’s eye through the image. The curve of the pool draws the eye through the image out to the ocean, while the shadow line draws the eye to the leading line of the sun star. When printed and viewed very large, individual glowing granules of sand catch the eye and pull it into the reflection in the pool and on through the image.
The color instantly faded after the sun dropped, but from experience, I knew that it would probably come back. Thinking the entire sky might now light up, I switched to a wide angle and backed way up. Sure enough, the entire sky caught fire, and I scored a number of epic shots, but none were better than this one, “Sun Star and Wizard’s Hat.” This hangs in both of my galleries, and I love telling the story of how I almost missed the shot!
