Sandra at Sunrise - St. Simons Island 6-7-06

On June 7, 2006, I was fortunate enough to produce three of my favorite photographs of all times. Two are contest finalists, and all three are framed and on display in my home. This photo of my wife Sandra was taken at 6:24 AM. Sandra doesn’t like to have her picture taken, but she has never refused my request to pose for one of my photographs. For this photo, we went out to the beach before sunrise so that I could set up the shot. To capture her entire silhouette, I had to lie face-down in the sand. I asked her to open her stride a bit and to hold her hands out from her side. To add interest, I had her hold a starfish that I had purchased at the local shell shop. We practiced the pose so that when the sun started to rise, we were ready. I just had to wiggle around a bit and reposition my tripod to capture the composition that I wanted. Months later, I was talking about this image, and I made the observation that there were two stars in the photo: the starfish and the sun. Someone made an even more astute observation that there were actually three stars: the starfish, the sun, and Sandra. How true. Canon 20D. Cropped vertically from an original horizontal composition. f/8 1/60 sec. ISO 400 10-22mm lens @ 16mm.