Sunrise at Nugget Point, The Catlins, Otago

Photographing the outdoors generally involves working within the limits of the weather and light conditions at the time, a constraint which sometimes means many days without a single photograph being taken. I’ve found that the best way to allow for this is to plan very simple itineraries with only a few destinations relative to the time spent travelling; that way I’m able to stay for several days in the same locality if necessary to wait out spells of bad weather without too much of a problem. Some places require more allowance for bad weather than others, and Nugget Point in Otago is a good example of the kind of place where it’s best to plan to stay for a whole week, if necessary.

Fortunately I was only thwarted by the weather for three days on this particular trip before the sun finally broke through for this moody sunrise photograph looking over The Nuggets. Even so, the opportunity on this morning was only short — just a minute or so — during which the rising sun shone briefly under the ever-present cloud canopy before climbing into it and disappearing again. A few minutes after this photograph was taken the colour had faded, and the familiar grey gloom of the past few days had returned.