Practice Makes Magic

Mo’omomi Beach, Molokai, Hawaii.

Molokai’s Mo’omomi Beach stretched out before me in the pearlescent predawn light. Giant waves threw themselves onto the lava-lined shore. What a shot this would be when the sun rose. The only problem—I could barely open the car door! The wind howled and the ocean spray coated the windshield with a thick layer of salt. Leaving my camera on the front seat, I pushed hard on the door, staggered out and began to set up my tripod only to realize that if I left it and returned for my camera, it would immediately become airborne and head for Honolulu. This wasn’t going to work, not without the sacrifice of life, limb and some very good camera equipment. I simply wasn’t prepared.

I retreated back to the car and beat myself up for not bringing the right gear. I wasn’t quite sure what the right gear would have been, but I was profoundly irritated that I didn’t have it.

Just as I was about to launch another round of self-abuse, the sun began to pink the horizon. For a moment, the inner critic hesitated; in that moment, my inner child screamed, “Get out there!”

Before the critic could speak again, I was out the door and into the wind-slapped, spray-drenched dawn. For the next half hour, as the sun surged into the sky, I whooped and hollered and drank it all in with every one of my five senses.

I finally returned to the car soaked and exhausted. My camera sat on the passenger seat warm, dry and without a single image on the film it contained. Did I care? Not a bit. What a morning!

The magic of Mo’omomi has lived with me ever since. I’ve returned there tens of times and taken hundreds of pictures—none, however, truly captured the magic of the place. Sometimes it was the wind and spray that shut me down (certainly I came better prepared than that first morning, but never got the perfect shot).

Sometimes there were other technical problems. I remember one glorious morning when I discovered that I lacked a graduated ND filter to allow the film to hold both the dawn sky and the dark lava of the shore. Another time I saw that only a much greater ND filter than the one I was carrying would allow me to blur the water as much as I wanted and still get the proper exposure.

Sometimes nature simply decided that it wasn’t the day for a great sunrise. I always had great experiences, just as I had that first morning, but I never managed to really capture the magic I felt there. Until a few weeks ago...

The car door opened gently in the pearlescent predawn light. There wasn’t a breath of wind, not a droplet of spray on the windshield. As I walked toward the shore, I could see that the tide was very low, revealing a huge lava shelf jutting out into what was usually crashing surf. The sea was calm, with the occasional set of waves coming ashore with enough height to cover parts of the lava. A line of low clouds lay along the horizon, while higher up lacier clouds streaked the sky. It was going to be a great sunrise.

“Today is the day!” I worked my way to the edge between lava and sea and set up my tripod. With a wide-angle lens, I composed the shot so that another small lava ledge drew a line from the bottom of my frame to where I knew the sun would rise. I took a number of shots at different shutter speeds as waves softly covered the lava ledge with water. Checking them out on the back of my digital camera, I chose the one or two shutter speeds that I thought would work best when the time came.

Out of my bag I took my Singh-Ray eight-stop variable ND filter. I didn’t need it in the predawn light, but knew I would as soon as the sun rose. I also grabbed my Singh-Ray two-stop graduated ND filter. (I also knew I would take a few shots where I just exposed correctly for the sky to have if I needed them when I got into Photoshop; with the graduated ND, however, I was pretty sure I could get the proper exposure in just one image.)

Nature was opening a window of opportunity and, finally, I was both there and ready. Wait for it...

The sun crept over the clouds on the horizon. A perfect set of waves came in as if on cue. Slow shutter clicks came from my camera. A giant smile spread across my face. Practice makes magic!

Visit Dewitt Jones’ website at www.dewittjones.com.

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