File:Lone Photographer Watching Sunrise Over Old Harry Rocks (21627483940).jpg

This was the view looking out over Old Harry Rocks at 7am this morning. For the briefest of moments, the sky turned the deepest of morning reds I had ever seen, as the sun began to make its way above the horizon and steal the redness from the east. The horizon slowly began to turn golden, but before it did I managed to shoot this four shot panorama.

Matt and I had decided that we would head out at silly-o-clock this morning in search of a beautiful sunrise over Old Harry Rocks. Although I couldn't find the damn place, as it isn't signposted anywhere in the whole of Dorset, I eventually turned up barely a few minutes late and we began to make the long walk across the fields to the edge of the mainland. This was my first visit to the place and although I had seen many photos of this place, I wondered what it would look like in real life. I wasn't disappointed. When we arrived at the coast, the sun was already a subtle orange and sunrise was imminent. There aren't too many compositional opportunities at Old Harry Rocks and the shots you see below are the ones so many people have done before. But no two images ever look the same and hopefully you will find in my images something a little different.

On our way back from the coast, Matt and I grabbed breakfast in a Swanage cafe. It was at this point that I made a complete fool of myself. As we took our seat in the empty cafe, we both noticed that a local, professional photographer was selling his images on the walls of the cafe. 40 quid for this image, 75 quid for that one. Seriously, they were snapshots taken on an iPhone. Matt asked me if I would pay up to 100 quid for one of those images, to which I replied "I wouldn't even display them." It really bothers me when people charge such a stupid amount of money for their images, especially when they are no better than what anyone could take themselves. It was at this point, as I continued to rant, that the owner of the cafe said proudly "they are my images."

So I sat down, tail between my legs and my face as red as the tomatoes he was cutting. I felt awful. I honestly thought they were by some "professional photographer" who had delusions of grandeur. If I had have known that the owner of the cafe had taken them, I would have judged them accordingly. Problem is, there is so much bullshit in photography, and so much diversity in taste. Sometimes things that a lot of us would never consider "good" can sell for a lot of money. I wished Id have kept my mouth shut.

Anyway, we ate our spit-covered breakfasts and buggered off as soon as we could, making our way to the New Forest to see if the now white sun may be a little softer over there. It wasn't and the sunlight reflected off of the foliage turning everything white and horrible. This is where the Canon 5Dsr, and any other Canon for that matter, falls to pieces. These contrasty, high dynamic range scenes are the Canons nemesis. It simply cannot expose any more than around 10-11 stops of dynamic range. It had no chance of getting anywhere close to capturing the scenes we looked upon. The LCD screen on the back of the camera was full of flashing highlights and compressed shadows, even when using filters. We didn't hang around long, we said our goodbyes and planned to meet at Lyme Regis the following morning.