Myrtle Beach, Part III: June 7 sunrise

If you’re a regular follower of this blog, you probably have seen a lot of my sunrise and sunset (mostly the former) shots from various trips to the East Coast over the past decade or so. 

I’ve gotten so many, in fact, I finally decided to drop quite a few of them in separate Sunrise and Sunset subfolders in my Objects folder at my photo site at SmugMug.com.

Last week, while in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for a family get-together of R&R, there were no sunrises to speak of for the first portion of the week because of heavy cloud cover in the early minutes of dawn and daylight. 

Then on Thursday, it rained most of the day. Instead of spending time at the beach, we took the grandchildren to Ripley’s Aquarium of Myrtle Beach at Broadway at the Beach, an inland shopping mall built around a large pond, not unlike Barefoot Landing mentioned in the previous post (although I like the layout and aesthetics of the latter much better). 

Friday was another strikeout because of dense cloud-cover. But on Saturday, which was checkout day, even though there were clouds along the horizon, there was an opening that allowed for the photos you see in this post, and I went to work documenting it with my iPhone 13 Pro from the balcony of our fourth-floor hotel, looking northeast. 

The photo leading off the post, the third and final installment of this brief three-post series, was taken near the end of my series of sunrise photos. As you can see, the horizon was still densely populated with clouds, but the sun found a way to reward me for waiting so long.

Before proceeding with other photos involving the sun itself, I’ll go back in time about 10 minutes before sunrise and present a shot of the sky exhibiting a spectacular array of color and cloud streaks (see first photo below). I made several compositions of this, and the one in this post struck me as the best.

In the second photo below, the sun is above the horizon, but the lower clouds are blocking it from appearing. You can see the intense orange color at the spot, though. We finally see sun in the third photo below. Photos four, five, six and seven below are next in order.  

For the shot above, I pulled way back on the focal range because I wanted to show the sky situation in tandem with the sunrise. The first shot below was taken immediately after the one above. The last photo below was the third last one I took.

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

Variations of sunrises at Myrtle Beach

In early April, I was in Myrtle Beach (one of three visits there so far this year), and I grabbed an assortment of photos with my Canon 6D and with the iPhone. Many of the shots were sunrises from a couple early mornings that I managed to get up in time. 

Some of the ones I liked best, though, were taken on the heavily overcast morning just before we returned to North Carolina. We decided to stroll along the beach a final time before heading out. (We no sooner had hit the road when the skies opened, and we had rain for about half of the return trip to Raleigh, but I digress). 

The very last shot I took that morning is the one you see leading off the post. Foremost, I like the compositional elements, but it also gives you an idea of the weather about to shake out a downpour in a matter of about 10 to 15 minutes. 

I usually like to present photos in my posts in chronological order, if/when I use any order at all (which is about maybe half the time). Today, I present the photos in reverse chronological order ... just to be different, I guess. 

In the days ahead, I'll be presenting in four segments pictures from our trip to Myrtle Beach later in April. 

A walker and runner are about to cross paths (above), with the ominous cloud cluster looming above them (above). The morning haze and/or fog fudges the clarity of the background in the photo immediately below. A group of uniformed individuals ran past us, heading north, and set up some kind of beachside camp (second photo below). I was unable to ascertain what that was about. 

Above and below are compositions designed to illustrate the expanse of the beach in either direction. The second photo below is similar, except in this shot, I was fortunate to include an individual standing on the shore just beyond the wave line taking a photo of someone in the shallow area of the ocean. 

These sunrise shots were taken earlier that same, final morning from the balcony of our room. They include the sun coming above the horizon (above), albeit obscured partially by a thin, low-lying band of clouds. The thin band was nothing compared to the more dense and larger band above it (first photo below), which the sun slipped behind in short order. When the sun finally rose high enough to escape that band of clouds (second photo below), it appeared larger and transformed the color spectrum of the sky and clouds. 

On the previous day, clouds played a role in the sunset again, although not nearly to the degree they did in the previous sequence. There was no spying the sun immediately on the horizon, but it did inch above a far less narrow band of clouds in short order (above and below) before emerging in its entirety (second below) when it began to cast a reflection on the ocean. A very thin band of additional clouds entered the picture (third and fourth photos below) before emerging for good and ratcheting up the reflection's intensity (fifth photo below). 

 

Two days before leaving, we dined at the Margaritaville restaurant at Broadway at the Beach, and I made these photos of some of the decor there (above and first two photos below). The third photo below is a photo of my meal (in progress), one of the best jambalaya dishes I've ever had. It was so good, I made a point to return there later in the month when we were back in Myrtle Beach. Inexplicably, the jambalaya on the second visit was like a whole new recipe; it was not that good at all.   

On April 5, three days before the previous shots were taken, I used the Canon 6D for the sunrise images you see above and in the next three below (all of the previous shots were taken with the camera in my iPhone 11). There were no clouds to work around this morning, so I concentrated on composition, the aural glow, brilliant orange hues and the reflection on the water. 

 

Mix of heavy haze and clouds transform sunrise into a warm-color spectacle

I've now shot enough sunrises and sunsets that I usually don't spend a lot of time on either of them any more unless there is a new element to them that piques my interest. 

Such was the case the morning of Aug. 26, when Lee Ann I awoke just a few minutes before the day's sunrise along North Topsail Island, N.C. We had been invited there to a house rental by her son and daughter-in-law to spend a couple days of R&R. 

Other than routine trips to local groceries, pharmacies, fast-food eateries and home improvement stores, it was the first time Lee Ann and I had ventured outside of our home since COVID-19 was declared a serious health threat in early March.

There were other people using the beach, but nothing close to the numbers you'd expect during a hot August week in a normal summer. 

We had talked about rising early enough one of the two mornings there to walk along the beach at dawn. So on the 26th, when we awoke noticing that the morning's schedule sunrise was just a few minutes away, we rushed to dress properly, and I grabbed my camera ... just in case. 

By the time we hit the beach, we'd gotten there with a minute or two to spare, and we saw the scene shown in the photo leading off the post. It was a pre-sunrise warm-color spectrum enhanced by the presence of a tapestry of clouds in all sizes and shapes. I couldn't wait to see what the sun would do with all that once it inched above the horizon. 

The answer comes in the photos -- roughly in chronological order -- shown below. I made various compositions, in most cases integrating few people on the beach into the shot to dramatize the color and exploit the silhouette opportunities. 

My favorite has wavered from the lead-off shot, to the fourth one below of the sun kissing the ocean just as the last of the orb inches above the horizon, to one of two shots of people walking into the solar reflection on the beach near the bottom. And notice, also near the bottom, several thin clouds draping themselves over portions of the sun.  

I made three exposures of each composition to give me a choice on the best frame to work with in post-processing. 

 Next up: The rest of my shots at North Topsail Island from the recent trip