A few weeks ago, the weekend of Valentine’s Day to be precise – I was fortunate enough to get Megan out my side for the weekend, picking her up on the Friday after work. Thanks to some rather awful traffic we only arrived in Somerset West after sunset and would in turn have to wait until Saturday before we dusted off our shutters, so to speak.
We didn’t have any plans for Valentine’s Day and instead spent most of the day hanging around the house and watching series. As evening grew near I suggested that we head out for a sunset photo mission, and since Megan had never shot at Kogelbaai before, decided that it’s where we would head. The drive there/back is always a ‘fun’ one, winding roads alongside steep sheer drops just feet away. Looking down outside the passenger window you can see crosses that lay scattered on the rocks, both from fisherman and drivers who were less than careful along the road over the years.
We arrived at Kogelbaai about 30 minutes before sunset and made our way towards Dappad Se Gat. The beach was fairly quiet with only a few couples getting their romance on, bottles of champagne and all. We on the other hand made our way across the sands, while I scouted for compositions… Megan was dedicated to the idea of ‘winging it’, despite my constant protests that she look for compositions prior to shooting, something that she as a fashion photographer doesn’t usually focus on in the same way us landscape types do, where we will spend weeks trying to find the right composition.
I noticed early on that while the sky was not ideal, there were hints at potential with a bank of clouds on the horizon which can often help in creating sun rays. There were also several scattered cumulus clouds at heights that would cater to early lighting and the predictable golden or sometimes orange colour that clouds that height tend to exhibit. The tide was at a fair level and allowed for some decent foreground rock compositions – not ideal, but enough to remain where we were.
The sun began to set, and as predicted the cumulus began to glow with colour and before long there were sun rays extending down as the sun itself dipped behind the cloth on the horizon. We stayed until the light had dissipated quite a bit, and I was left shooting without my ND filter, using a small aperture to get water movement.
After our shoot at Kogelbaai, we made an impromptu stop at Simply Asia at Somerset Mall to grab some dinner. Hardly a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner by the mainstream expectations, but was exactly what was needed after bearing the brunt of the cold ocean winds just minutes before.
Sunday was far less active and consisted of hours of laying in bed watching television series… That was until the camera came out and I started grabbing shots of Megan, sometimes to her dismay – but eventually she gave up fighting me off and accepted that it was going to happen either way (no inappropriate metaphor intended there). We ended up spending an hour so just chatting and snapping photos.
