“Go to the lighthouse for sunrise!”, they said; “It’ll be grand! You’ll get great pictures!”, they said. “Great idea…”, I thought…

A grand day indeed…

That was how it began.

The previous day was nothing but a flurry of “Should we?”, “Shouldn’t we?”, “Let’s do this!”, “But sunrise is at 5AM! That’s too early!”, “It’ll be worth it.”, “Are you sure?”, “Yeah, we’ll get great photos!”.

Once we convinced ourselves that it was a great idea, we got our stuff ready: what do you need to photograph dawn? Most people would be fine with a camera and a lens, but me? No sir, let’s do it big. I should get at least four lenses, and possibly a spare camera, you never know… (don’t judge me, that place is jinxed: while there I have been in a storm once and swallowed by the sea a few months later).

Imagine leaving your home in the middle of the night, carrying a horribly heavy backpack, filled with things that you ABSOLUTELY need to have on you (not really though); imagine struggling to get a taxi while in a crowd of half crazed/half drunk teenagers (it was a Sunday before a bank holiday, and there had been a concert of some kind in the city); imagine getting at your target location after spending a good fifteen minutes trying to convince your cabby to drive you through isolated and dark roads; imagine then looking at the clear sky and at your hopes to get a great pic of the sun rising from the sea…

Now, imagine walking towards your target, and – as you’re walking – realizing that all around you a very thick mist is appearing as if out of nowhere [*sound of hopes being crushed*]. I was kinda like being on a set of a pirate movie…. Water all around, all sounds muffled by the mist, the smell of seaweeds and fish, the sea so eerily calm… it was almost like we were about to be hit by some kind of curse (‘The Curse of the Black Pearl’ came to mind).

No such thing happened (phew).

So we spent a couple of hours half complaining, half making fun of the situation. We also spent some time taking pictures as the day grew brighter:

Smokestacks

Ghost town

And the, all of a sudden, out of the mist… a single cyclist (a pretty unexpected event, am I right?).

The cyclist

We weren’t the only hopeless photographers lost in the mist! Yay…

And that’s when the day turned, when the disappointed photographers started to make their way back to land. That’s when the sun started showing over the horizon (I assume, we couldn’t really see it, but the day grew brighter).

The mist started to fade, we were suddenly able to actually see the sea (did I mention how we couldn’t even do that?).

And that’s also when we saw the sun. We had clearly missed sunrise, as the disc was WELL above the horizon.

Mist vanishing

Red

Morning

Sunrise, kinda…

And thus my SECOND attempt to shoot sunrise at Poolbeg lighthouse failed. It’s time to start planning for the next. And, you know, third time’s a charm…