North Point

The CoPA Members Show is just around the corner so I thought I would post the images I'll be showing over the next couple of days.  The first is one of my favorites taken in October of 2007.  It was my intent to go down to Lake Michigan and photograph sunrise of the old North Point pier, just south of Bradford Beach.  It had become a popular spot among the Cream City Photographers crowd on Flickr. 

What I had in mind that day was to catch sunrise with the pier in the foreground using a long exposure to smooth out the texture of the water.  I took several images as the sun got closer to the horizon and I was generally satisfied with the pre-sunrise images.  As the sun broke the Lake Michigan horizon, I shifted to the shoot the pier from the north side.  Immediately, I saw the morning glow on the algae covered wood of the pier.  Using a polarizer and a neutral density filter, I was able to keep the exposure long enough to give me smooth water.  

I shoot a lot of sunrises and sunsets but this day reminded me how important it is to look away from the sun.  In this case, it was a matter of simply looking at how the sun was illuminating the subject I was originally using as a silhouette.  I love the image shown here for several reasons (the texture of the wood and algae), but mostly because I left myself open-minded to shift from my original thoughts about this composition that led to the shot.  On another occasion, I might have missed this shot.