Monterey Bay sunrise

This glorious morning was the start of my final trip to San Francisco for Funding Circle—one abruptly ruined when I woke up the following morning with flu.

Travelling to California every 2-3 months for work, I had built a nice little routine that allowed me to actually see some of the state rather than just the ride from airport-to-hotel-to-office and back. With London-San Francisco being a kind of high-end commuter route, it was vastly cheaper to fly home on a Sunday rather than a Friday and so I would land in SF on a Monday, work the week in the office and then have Friday and Saturday night to get out of the city on mini road trips before making it back to SFO for a Sunday evening flight home again.

This time logistics had dictated flipping things around and arriving for the weekend, meaning I’d get my photo trip first (while jet-lagged) and then my work week to follow. After a few trips north out of San Francisco, I decided to head south this time, to Big Sur, staying in a hotel in Monterey as my base for the weekend.

Waking up nice and early on the Saturday morning, I grabbed my camera bag and stumbled down the stairs to the hotel boardwalk overlooking the bay, ready for sunrise. Having arrived late the night before, I hadn’t scouted at all and so just wandered along the boardwalk shooting hand-held as the sun began to rise.

With clear skies, shooting out into the open bay was interesting but I struggled in post with the colour of the images for quite a while, trying to recreate the feeling I had being there. Eventually, a shift to black and white worked nicely for this image of a small boat heading out, with birds flocking across the frame.

Finally, I got really taken with the quality of the light on a pair of outdoor heaters, with the sun back-lighting them while the reflected light from the hotel added a warm glow on the side facing me and my camera.