You find yourself in the middle of New Zealand for a month. I'm walking distance from the ocean. I have a tripod, a drone and a camera. I think you would have done the same thing. You get up at 4AM and walk out across algae covered rocks to get the perfect shot of an abandoned lighthouse at sunrise.
You need to understand. I love sleep. Like LOVE sleep. It might be one of my favorite past times. And I'm not even joking. I can easily lay down and take a two hour nap, get up, go on with the rest of my day and fall asleep that night like it's nothing. It's the best! But there's something about getting up before anyone else is awake and setting yourself up to not only watch the sunrise but capture the moment from both ground and air.
So that's what I did. Hell I may have woke up at 3:30AM. I didn't want to miss it. My buddy Jordan picked me up and the two of us set off to get the perfect sunrise shot over the Gisborne ocean.
We got to the beach, parked our car and set off towards the lighthouse. First we crossed the sand. That was the easy part. Then we got to this long stretch of rocks you had to cross. At the very end was the lighthouse. There's only once or twice a day you can get to it because of the ocean tides. This early in the morning we wouldn't have a problem. Or so I thought.
My first mistake was removing my flip flops. I thought I would just leave them on the sand and get them when I returned. But my baby like feet, not use to the rough surface of the rocks, struggled all the way across. I sucked it up. I soon realized my biggest challenge was going to be not falling down every other step. The rocks were covered in algae and wet from the falling tide. I swear it couldn't have been any more slippery than if we had covered them with baby oil. I must have fallen at least five or ten times.
But eventually we got there and man was it worth it. I set up my tripod to take a time lapse of the rising sun. Jordan immediately took out the drone. By this time the sky had begun to fill up with light and we were both ready to go. First Jordan would fly by the lighthouse and then I'd take my turn. He was using his long exposure function to get some smooth shots of the ocean splashing around the lighthouse. I made pass after pass, taking my drone as close as I could to the abandoned building without hitting it. And then I snapped this photo.
So, given the opportunity to wake up at 3:30AM and trek out across a landscape of slippery boulders, what would you have done?
