Myrtle Beach, Part I: Sunrise

Lee Ann and I had some time to burn on our annual time-share deal, so we found accommodations at a resort in Myrtle Beach from Dec. 9-18. There was a catch to it, though; Lee Ann had some work to do on several of the days while we were there, so that gave me a good chunk of roam time to do something I hadn't been able to do a lot of in 2021 -- photograph!

I photographed seven churches, did an extensive photo documentation of a shopping development called Barefoot Landing at the Waterfront, profiled the local art museum (inside and outside), the ballpark of the Class A Myrtle Beach Pelicans minor league baseball team and a holiday market at a shopping development on the city's Southside called Market Common, which we had visited once before on a previous visit. 

We also spent a day in nearby Surfside Beach (a trip inspired by the holiday market visit, but more on that later), and I profiled a couple of shops we visited there. I also spent time profiling a portion of Ocean Boulevard, the closest north-south thoroughfare to the ocean in Myrtle Beach, spent a good amount of time photographing the sites along the beach (both with my DSLR and my iPhone 11) ... and we rose on time every morning to catch and photograph the sunrises. 

We've now visited Myrtle Beach more than a dozen times in the past five years or so, and I've seen and photographed a lot of sunrises there, enough so that I tell people that every sunrise seems to be different in some aspect. 

Which is why I start this 10-part series from our latest visit there with an overview of the sundry sunrises we experienced and photographs. Dense clouds precluded any photo-worthy sunrises on at least three mornings. But there was something noteworthy the rest of the days.

On Dec. 17, the last morning we chronicled sunrises, I used my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens almost exclusively. I grabbed four or so early pics with the iPhone first then turned to the 6D. 

On that last day, I also concentrated on integrating in my compositions an inordinately large number of birds that flew into the vista for what seemed like 15 minutes, at least. You see examples of these in the photo leading off the post and in the image immediately below. In the one at the top, I caught a bird just  before it crossed in front of the sun. I thought it'd be cool to catch the bird juxtaposed on the sun moments later, and I succeeded, too, but the light intensity was such (see photo below) that the bird's silhouette seems negligible.

The full array of sunrises from this trip can  be found in a folder at my galleries at SmugMug.com, although I plan to consolidate previous sunrises into this folder at a later date. But for now, the sunrises just from this week are there. 

On a few of the mornings, it was a matter of catching the sun in and around low-lying clouds ... or just before the cloud cover swallowed the orb for a couple hours before it rose high enough to stand clear of them.

On Dec. 10, the first morning I began recording sunrises, I had the beautiful colored cloud scheme above to enjoy before the sun ever made it above the lower cloud layer. If you look real close in the upper left area, you can catch a seagull in the image. When the sun did creep about that layer (below), it was visible only briefly, and then only in part because. 

I was more fortunate on Day 2, Dec. 11, although the pre-sunrise cloud and color scapes (above) did give me momentary pause. But the early sun stayed out in full long enough for me to capture the sun in full gloary (below) along with a fiery reflection on the ocean. 

Clouds were so dense on Day 3 (Dec. 12) that I skipped it altogether. But on Day 4, Dec. 13, I got the more intense coloring you see above captured the moment the sun first peeked above the thin horizon-layer of clouds. And then I got something I'd never had before -- a ghost copy of the sun (first and second below). I suspected flare was fully or partially responsible, after I went online afterward to explore this phenomenon, my suspicion was mostly supported. Flare is a sort of feedback of a light source when it reflects off another bright object. This can be controlled by removing a UV filter from the lens if you're using a DSLR. However, given that I was using my iPhone, I had no real control of it. So ... I decided to accept the oddity and keep these pictures. 

Day 5 (Dec. 14) gave me another set of cloud layers to contend with. I got the photo above, with a small portion of the orb obscured by clouds, just after it inched above the horizon. I couldn't wait to see what I'd get when the sun reached the thin cloud band above it in a few minutes. The result appears below and came with another ghost orb to the lower right of the sun ... along with a gorgeous reflection trail on the water and a seagull flying above and right of the sun. 

Day 6 (Dec. 15) brought me the above just-before-sunrise view, followed shortly afterward by the peeking above the cloud layer (first below) and, eventually, the full sun and bunch of birds in the foreground (second below). Clouds were prohibitive on Day 7 (Dec. 16), so there was no sunrise to be had. 

In general, documenting the sundry sunrises proved to be one of the most difficult posts I've composed in my 13 years maintaining this blog. The reason is hard to explain without dragging readers into tedium. One of the handy benefits of SmugMug.com, where I keep my online galleries, is that I can upload photos there directly from my iPhone, which I did for the majority of sunrises. But a quirk of iPhone pictures stored on SmugMug is that if/when a site owner goes to retrieve copies of them, they are sent to us in a zip file -- in duplicate. And until dealing with this particularly post -- halfway through the download process -- it was not apparent to me that the two copies of each image came in different sizes, and in most cases, significantly different.

After using the downloaded files for any blog posts, I archive them on my external hard drive. Which means ... all of the iPhone pictures I've archived all these years could very well have not been the most optimum quality of the duplicates I chose to keep. 

Next: Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum