Luck

Accidental light painting with the biggest light there is! Photographing sunrise at Cathedral Cove, NZ with a 10 stop ND filter to smooth the waves and the clouds, I had the shutter open for about 17 seconds (bulb mode) and out of the corner of my eye I saw water rushing in (the tide was going out and had been receding from my vantage point), I quickly grabbed the low tripod and put it on the rock next to the one I was sat on just in time and then remembered to close the shutter after the lucky save.

Later that morning I was showing my images to the lady that we were staying with and realised that this 'accident' might have potential. Especially the way that it curves over the arch that makes this place well known. I blended the light streak with two earlier exposures taken a minute or so before, one that had better clouds and one for more detail in the shadows.

The light streak aside I feel this image is lucky in that I made it to the beach at all, I had planned the visit to coincide with low tide at sunrise however the day before the Coromandel Peninsula had suffered the worst storm for 30 years with roads closed due to flooding and landslips. Apart from torrential rain, thankfully our route there was ok, I woke at 4am, full cloud cover, nearly went back to bed, drove to the car park, full cloud cover, nearly drove back to go to bed, did the 40 min hike to the beach, cloud on the horizon, got set up, had an hour of being the only person there, so incredibly peaceful, bracketed shots every few minutes, then as the Sun started to come up the clouds on the horizon cleared...

Shot at 14mm, as far back as I could get, I wanted to include the Te Hoho rock (left) as well as the arch from this side as it's a composition that I haven't seen often, most people get the rock whilst inside the arch. Quite a bit of skewing/warping was needed to get it to look more natural (I don't have a tilt shift lens yet).