A Perfect Morning on the Wild Coast

I consider a photoshoot, particularly a landscape photoshoot a success if I can walk away with a publishable image. That’s one publishable image. Obviously a commercial shoot is different, but the hit rate for out of the park awesomeness is still pretty much on the low end of figures. A really good landscape shoot might offer up a few publishable images, but again, the expectation should never be more than one. 

The reality, again with landscape photography, is that a fair number of planned photoshoots net a whole lotta nothing. The reality is that weather, timing, and just plain bad luck can act together to ruin a shoot. A forecast for epic cloud can end up in a mizzly spray of grey drizzle. The light can just simply not pop, or a haze may block out any decent contrast and detail from a scene that really requires it. You can plan for weeks to chase some epic snow in the mountains and then, despite all forecasts predicting it, be disappointed by days of clear skies, smokey horizons and meh light. It happens.

Then there are the magic mornings where it just keeps getting better! We had one of these on our last workshop to the Wild Coast earlier this year. Our first morning at the iconic Hole in the Wall on South Africa’s Wild Coast was just a smorgasbord of epic light and awesome scenes. We end our ‘Wandering The Wild Coast’ on this rugged section of Eastern Cape’s coastline because of the stunning cliffs that drop into the ocean, the beautiful and ethereal Milkwood forests and of course, the Hole-in-the-wall massif itself: a rock outcrop with a tunnel bored out by millennia of waves crashing from the ocean side, and a river opening out to the sea chipping away from the landward side. 

The weather forecast had predicted a very gentle onshore breeze with some early morning cloud cover. Nothing particularly exciting. As we walked towards the bay where we would be shooting the cloud cover actually looked heavier than we had anticipated, although out toward the Indian Ocean it did show a great big clear patch. 

Setting up on the rocks of the bay, with the sunlight starting to backlight Whale Rock, we suddenly saw cloud seep into clouds (time 06:02). Magenta and orange flecked the cloud base while a coolish blue still lay over the top. An explosion of orange lit the horizon. The clouds themselves shifted and parted fairly quickly as well. The tide itself was coming in, but was low enough that our small group of photographers could get themselves into water searching for decent foreground rocks to balance against the background coastal peak and cliffs. 

As the sun rose, and feeling like I had caught what I wanted (already by 06:22), I moved away from the water and quickly launched my drone (along with another two of the photographers who were also keen on getting aerial). The colour kept coming; one of those moments were I was torn between shooting aerial images of Hole in the Wall, and getting back to the shoreline for more seascape images. As the sun rose a little higher the colour seemed to burn off ever so slightly and a hazy warm light diffused through the milkweed forest. Change of scene!

By 07:00 several of us were searching for shapes in the gnarled wood of the forest. The sun, still low on the horizon, now casting gorgeous light rays through the leaves and forming an awesome sunstar as a feature. It was only 07:36 and yet it felt like surely we were done. There couldn’t be more. Wrong! Walking back the light rays sifting through the leaves just kept getting better and better. 

Finally, at 08:15 we left the forest (we’d only entered the forest to get to Hole in the Wall at 05:55). It still wasn’t over though as there was the obligatory ‘cows on a beach’ shot to get as we walked back towards the lodge and a well-earned breakfast. Not the strongest image to end the morning on but still one I was happy to have. 

Not every morning works out. Some just don’t stop giving!