Sunset over Devonshire Bay - HDR
On our first trip to Bermuda in 09', one thing I failed to get a photo of that I had planned to almost from the moment our ship set sail out of NY harbor, was a nice sunset shot of some picturesque looking bay. Each evening I was somewhere else and not able to get back in time to capture the sunset in Hamilton. So this trip in 2012' I was determined to get one.
Since I had other places I wanted to be Wednesday when we landed, and we were leaving Friday afternoon, Thursday was the only chance to do it. So I packed up my gear and several lenses to cover all possible angles and potential compositions, and my tripod. Then I lugged them onto the last ferry in the afternoon that would get me into town with enough time to find a magic spot, set up my equipment an wait for the sun to go down.
The best laid plans of mice and men. When I stepped off the ferry at the terminal in Hamilton, against all odds the boats and ships in the harbor really didn't look all that great. Or at least not from any of the spots I saw as I walked all around the harbor.
Finally I decided to start walking eastward away from Hamilton and look for another clearing farther down that would also over look the bay and setting sun. Not so easy to find it turned out. A quarter of a mile, no good. A half a mile not any better. Three quarters of a mile no openings to even try, and by this time I'm concerned that again I will get no shots this trip, as there was no way I would get back to Hamilton in time before the sun set, to get even just an ordinary sunset shot, which would be better than no shot at all, which is what I was surely about to wind up with, as the sky was getting darker and darker.
As I reached the hamlet of Devonshire the road took a sharp right turn which would finally point me towards the bay again and the sunset. Better yet there was a port with lots of boats to boot. Not wide spread out and majestic like in Hamilton. But there was water and boats floating on top of it and they were lined up right in front of the western sky. If you are a true photographer then you'll learn to make do with what's handed to you when the pickings are slim. And quickly pulling out my camera I found a composition that pleased me. Memorizing just how high and where my camera needed to be, I whipped out my tripod and set my camera on top of it.
I don't take very many HDR shots but this was one time I knew it that it would be a necessity. With my head lamp already on sitting on top of my baseball cap so I could see my controls in the dimming light, I set up my camera to take several sets of 5 bracketed shots, just in time to capture this scene as the sun went down.
It was a long walk for sure but I made it, and just in the nick of time.
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