The alarm goes off at 4:10. Not because I'm dramatic about it, but because the tide is out at 5:40 and the fog usually burns off around six. On the coast, the shot isn't a place — it's a window, and the window is narrow.
By the time I'm set up, the fog is still sitting on the water. I don't fight it. Fog is a gift if you time it — it separates the headlands into layers and turns a flat gray morning into something with depth. I get two minutes of it before the sun cuts through.
You can't schedule the coast. You can only show up ready and let it decide what it's going to give you.
Forty minutes of flying, three batteries, one usable golden-hour pass, and a memory card full of frames I'll cull down to a dozen. That's the job. The client sees the dozen. This is the other four hours.
