Driftwood Beach Sunrise
My favorite place on Jekyll Island is Driftwood Beach. But it’s not without some effort. Driftwood Beach is named for the large number of old trees that now rest as driftwood on the beach. The shapes and textures are wonderful against the clean white sand. The effort – is that this is a sunrise location. And with the unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean to the east, you have to get up early. The other challenge with this location is the tides. At high tide there is a relatively small amount of beach presenting a challenge in the dark before sunrise. At low tide you have wide expanses with patterns, reflections, and smooth sandy beaches. We’ve timed this workshop for the low tide at sunrise.
The weather makes a big difference for a sunrise shoot. Luckily, this location is great even when it is completely overcast. For sunrise on sunny days I like to emphasize the changing light before sunrise, rising sun on the horizon, the warm glow on driftwood and sandy beaches, and colorful clouds in the sky. On cloudy days I tend to emphasize the soft pastel tones, neutral grays on the water and sand, and use the dark color of the driftwood to create contrasts. It’s great – you can’t lose as long as you are up early.
One of the tricks to photographing sunrise is to use filters. For the sunrise on a sunny morning, my favorite filter is a Singh Ray Reverse 3 Stop graduated neutral density filter. The Reverse GND filter has its deepest light blocking in the middle of the filter and gradually decreases the filter effect toward the top of the filter. It’s perfect to block light on a bright horizon. I find that the 3 stop filter is enough to cut the light on the horizon while maintaining the light on the beach, ocean, and upper sky.
The other filter I use is a Singh Ray Vari-N-Duo. The VND filter is a combination of a circular polarizer and a 9 stop neutral density filter. It is used to both polarize light and to slow the exposure – perfect to turn waves into a gauzy blur. With the Vari-N-Duo and low light, it’s easy to get exposures of 20-30 seconds.
One of the challenges with Driftwood Beach is deciding on your subject. It’s easy to try to photograph the beach – the whole beach. And that’s okay, but the best images involve simplifying the scene. Look at the beach and what catches your eye. Pick a subject. Now emphasize the subject and remove everything else.
Eric Bowles Images 
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