I met Jada, a fellow resident of the Seabright area of Santa Cruz, at 6:30am over at Aldo’s by the harbor. I got dressed in the dark this morning, so I was glad to see I hadn’t put on anything backwards when we saw each other. When we’d discussed the plans for the shoot the previous day, Jada said she just needed some new headshots for her business website she’s in the process of building. Jada is a wellness/nutritional counselor and yoga instructor, so I suggested we do a sunrise session at the beach – because I’d always envisioned this would be cool to do. As soon the words left my mouth, I was like, “What were you thinking Chris? You’re not a morning person!!” But the cat was out of the bag, and Jada was excited about the idea, so I went with it.
I’m glad I did.
In only a few minutes, the sky was lightening up with gorgeous hues of yellow, orange and blue. I grabbed my gear and we headed out towards Walton Lighthouse, the iconic landmark for Seabright Beach. I asked Jada to get warmed up while I tested my lighting equipment and waited for the ambient light increase a bit. Soon we were shooting away and having a great time. We experimented with a few poses on top of the tetradons (yeah, I’m super-smart because I know what those giant cement “jacks” are called). Of course we picked that one tetradon with the tiled red heart embedded on it. Cool stuff. Then we moved out past the lighthouse to the large, raised cement block – it looks like a foundation for something that used to be on top of it. It was all wet from the high-tide waves crashing over that area, which was cool because it reflected Jada when she stood on top of it. We got a gorgeous series of poses, and even one “money” shot with waves crashing in the air behind Jada, as if she were summoning the ocean spirits to do her bidding. Of course as soon as I turned my back to the water, Jada summoned a rogue wave that almost took me out and got my pants and one of my cameras all wet. No biggie, nothing destroyed – my fault for not paying attention!
Anyways, enough talk – who reads this stuff anyway? Mom? Are you there? Here’s some of my favorites from the shoot. If this isn’t enough, there’s 87 edited photos to view on my proofing site, www.goodeyephotography.com.
