Sunrise Shoot

I am by no means an early bird, being a student doesn’t allow it. Large amounts of free time and afternoon lectures isn’t conducive to early starts. Despite this, something I’ve wanted to do for a while now is a photoshoot of Worcester city in the early hours of the day. You see pictures thrown about of winter sunrises showing fields of grazing deer. Where frost has made the grass crisp and fog has settled low on the plane. The light shines through this mist, diffuses and creates rays of sunlight reminiscent of the gates of heaven opening. The reality, as I found out the hard way, is very different.

First off, waking up early, if you’re not used to it, is a mammoth task in itself. Anything you do then must be worth leaving your warm, comfy bed. Planning is key. With a 6am start, I woke early to ensure plenty of time to get to the photoshoot destination in good time. Looking at the weather app I saw that sunrise was 7.44am and it’d be a clear morning. It lied. 7.45am: light, cloudy and no sun visible. From my experience, I suggest you add a good 20 minutes to half an hour to the sunrise time provided on any weather app, just to compensate for the time it takes for the sun to position itself somewhere useful. Not knowing this meant that I was walking around for a while before there was any useable light (effort).

After a short while (and several chapters of my book in the freezing cold), the sun was in full force and bathing the Worcester cityscape with perfect morning sunlight. This was potentially a good hour and a half after sunrise time (I’m still bitter about it – there was no need to wake up as early as I had). Despite all this, the gold morning light was worth the wait. And while there were no grazing deer (the only fields I saw were swampy, bare and cordoned with horrible wire fences), I was wished many ‘good mornings’ by passers-by along my walk and was lucky enough to find a group of early morning rowers. It is incredibly unlikely, but if any of them are reading this, I apologise for papping you but the opportunity was right there.

Closing up, my main comment on sunrise shoots is that I can guarantee it will not turn out the way you expected it to. But provided you take a book, wrap up warm and maybe carry a flask of coffee, an early walk is an amazing way to start your day and if you’re lucky enough, you may get some good shots too.

Rest assured next time I will be much less scared of missing the sunrise and will wake up a bit later - because reading a book on a bench, on the muddy side of a suspicious looking path at 7.30am is not how you should be spending your mornings. I don't recommend it.