Anticlimactic Sunrise Photography at High Falls

Revisiting the Past

Photographing High Falls is a fall-back whenever I don’t have any other specific plans. Even when I walk away without a great shot, it’s an enjoyable experience. This shot is not recent. In fact, I took this photograph almost 10 years ago with my first DSLR. I’ve recently revisited it and translated some of the editing techniques I have learned over the years into the final product. That editing process required some of the many editing tools I have accumulated.

I have way too many subscriptions. Like, way too many. But I NEED all of them, of course. I have multiple applications that I use for various editing needs. I also have a few for planning. And after yesterday morning I can rationalize at least one or two of them.

I have an entire home page on my iPhone dedicated to photo editing and planning. One of my favorites is The Photographer’s Ephemeris. “TPE” is a one-stop shop for determining sun, moon, and celestial positioning for photo locations, and has some really great features like augmented reality and night pollution map overlays. The app is a one-time purchase of $10 USD, but it also offers an in-app option for the subscription-only service, Skyfire. Skyfire provides an additional layer on the TPE map that helps you visualize the predicted quality of sunsets and sunrises.

“Using multiple weather models, Skyfire applies complex algorithms to generate forecasts of where the best light and color will develop in the coming days. This information is shown as an overlay on top of the TPE map. The intensity of the color of the overlay coincides with the likelihood of there being a colorful sky at that position around sunrise or sunset.”

Skyfire’s highest tier subscription offers color-coded, mapped predictions up to four days and allows you to set probably thresholds for push notifications. I set mine to 70%+.

 

Real-time Information

But one photography weather forecast isn’t enough for me. I need two. The TPE app with Skyfire baked in a killer combo, but the one feature it is lacking is widgets for iOS. I can’t be bothered to spend 12 seconds opening TPE to get my photo weather forecast. So, I filled that gap with another application: Alpenglow. Alpenglow offers a competing product to Skyfire in a standalone app, decoupled from the features of TPE. When you subscribe, Alpenglow provides four day sunrise and sunset forecasts as well as other useful information about moon-phases and sunrise, sunset, blue hour, and golden hour times. They also offer a free tier if you’d like to try out its base functions, and a free trial for Pro. Most importantly, the Alpenglow Pro subscription offers widgets to display all of this information right on your device’s home screen.

 

 

A Return on Investment

My morning routine includes a daily check of my photo home screen to determine if I’ll be walking the dog, or skipping my coffee and scrambling to find a location to set up and capture the dawn’s early light. Yesterday morning was an example of the latter.

I woke to an Alpenglow status of, “Good.” This is literally the most optimistic forecast the application has given me for Rochester in the past four months. Since the sun has been hiding away in Western New York for about that long, I’ve had to assume that Alpenglow has been 100% accurate.

I did a quick check of Skyfire and saw that it seemed to agree with Alpenglow. The app was showing some deep red color somewhere out towards Syracuse and was depicting good line-of-sight.

 

 

Finally, I had an opportunity to test the accuracy of my costly forecast services. I knew this day would come eventually, and I’ve had a handful of standby locations to photograph should my numbers ever hit. I hastily gathered my gear, informed my wife that she would be making her own coffee, and started driving East in a Tacoma with a cold engine and colder seats.

 

Flour City and the Yankee Leaper

This morning I would be photographing High Falls. There are only a handful of cities in the United States that have waterfalls in their downtown district. The High Falls is one of them. It’s one of my favorite places to photograph and is rich in History.

In the 1800s the Genesee River water that flowed over the falls powered more than 20 flour mills and earned Rochester the OG nickname, “Flour City.”

In the fall of 1829 “Yankee Jumper” Sam Patch famously died in a failed stunt jump from the top of the 96 foot (29) falls. Patch survived a similar stunt into the Niagara Falls basin less than a month before.

 

Chasing Light

As I navigated I-490 towards the inner-loop (half-loop?) I could see red streaks starting to fill the sky. I was about to start driving faster when I noticed an accident ahead of me and quickly maneuvered to the left lane to avoid colliding with a small pile up of cars. Suddenly blue and red lights appeared in my rearview mirror. I was worried I was being pulled over but as I passed the minor fender bender, and the police cars slowed, it became clear that I was not their intended target. Still, I narrowly dodged a bullet as the small formation of squad cars immediately blocked all Eastbound traffic. Emboldened, I pushed the now warm engine a little harder towards my destination.

On the Inner Loop Eastbound at State Street an accident is blocking the right lane. #ROC #Rochester #traffic pic.twitter.com/dh0fL0DRrL

— TTN Rochester (@TotalTrafficROC) March 16, 2021

The Agony of Self-Defeat

This is normally where I would tell you about my composition, how I set up the shot, and some techno-babble about shutter speeds and flux capacitors. However, on this particular morning also that went out the window. Not because of a lack of on-scene discipline but rather a lack of planning.

As I arrived in the parking lot of the Genesee Brew House I could see warm, red light reflecting off the hood of my truck. This was significant because my truck is black.

I jumped out fo the car with my bag and began running over the Pond de Rennes Bridge. Looking over my left shoulder to monitor the perspective and alignment of the falls with the burning sky, I managed not to trip over the dozens of “MAGA” tagged benches that litter the bridge. About three quarters of the way across the bridge, I found a suitable viewpoint, stopped, and replied, “No problem” to my lungs and legs which were thanking me profusely for the reprieve.

I quickly deployed my tripod, turned on my camera, mounted it to the tripod, set my framing and exposure, and pressed the shutter release button. All of this happened in the span of about ninety seconds from when I set my bag on a bench with “Trump Sucks” written on it in black Sharpie.

As I waited for the 2.5 second exposure to complete I took a moment to think about how fortunate I was. I made it successfully through the gauntlet of morning traffic, crashed cars, road-blocking police, and a 17-mile run across a bridge of death. All without the assistance of caffeine.

Finally, it was time for my camera to give me my reward. And what it gave me was this:

Zen and the Art of Camera Maintenance

And here is where the real lesson begins, kids. You can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on photography equipment and software. You can spend dozens of hours researching, routing, and planing the perfect shot. But if you don’t put a memory card in your camera you can’t make pretty pictures.

In this way photography is a lot like baseball. You tirelessly train on fundamentals and slowly improve your game pursuing a fleeting moment, an opportunity to try to hit one out of the park. And then you head right back to the locker room and repeat the cycle. Photographing High Falls during a stellar sunrise and an inoperable camera is kind of like bringing a wiffle bat to the playoffs.

Every time I take my camera out I stare across the diamond at a scene that might throw me a 90 mph (144.84 kmh) fastball. Or it might throw me a curveball or a sinker. This can come in the way of fast rolling clouds, rain, approaching headlights, or any manner of Murphy-induced disasters. Sometimes, you can read a sinking pitch and catch a foul tip to stay in the game with a full count. Sometimes, you lean into a wild pitch and take a walk. In the case of the missing SD Card I struck out — hard.

Unfortunately, this is a lesson I have learned before. I’d like to say that I won’t have to learn it again. In fact, at that moment, I vowed to put an extra memory cards in my backpack and my wallet the moment I got home. I’m going to get around to doing that very soon….

Silver Linings

While I don’t think it is in their official mission statement, when I coached Little League Baseball our mantra was to teach “life lessons through baseball.”

No matter the struggle, being a photographer is a wonderfully humbling experience, and it is full of life lessons. If you let it, photography can teach you patience, determination, and discipline. It can teach you the importance of a single moment, and how to be alone with your thoughts. It’s a wonderful way to spend your time.

Photography reinforces the philosophy of continuous learning, and using failure as an opportunity to reflect on your strengths. It’s important to remember that even the best players only hit the ball three out of ten times.

Most importantly, photography will occasionally remind you to put down your damn electronic devices and enjoy the sunrise.

Thanks for reading. Head over to the gallery to see my portfolio and view print purchase options.