Cocoa Beach Pier

Kevin M. suggested photographing sunrise yesterday and said he was thinking about going to the Cocoa Beach pier. That sounded good to me, so that’s where we were about an hour before the sun arrived on Saturday morning.

It was dark at first, and I was using higher ISO settings and longer exposures which smoothed the water appearance nicely for me. Since I like that look, I used a variable neutral density filter to force my shutter to slower speeds when it got a little brighter.

Empty Beach Empty Beach (70mm, f/4, ISO 800, 15 seconds. ~65 minutes before sunrise.)

The wind was blowing at 20 mph or more and it was a little chilly too. The weather kept most of the crowds away, though. There were only one or two other folks on the beach at first and not too many more when we left over an hour later. And there were no signs of the surfers that we often see there.

A bit blowy A bit blowy. (95mm, f/4, ISO 400, 25 seconds. ~50 minutes before sunrise.)

I tried standing so I blocked my camera from the wind as much as possible and I made several exposures with tripod legs collapsed to reduce its cross section. But I still had a few shots ruined from vibrations. Fortunately, I was checking the images and remade some that looked blurry. I could have also tried hanging my backpack from the tripod hook, but I didn’t think to try that at the time.

The pier is a fine place for a sunrise shoot. If you want to make a longer day of it, it’s also not too far north from there to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge or south to Viera Wetlands. Looking back through the blog, it seems I haven’t been there since late in 2019. And yesterday’s trip was also the farthest I’ve ventured from home since the pandemic started. A little photo op variety is exciting!

Below the boards Below the boards (35mm, f/5.6, ISO 160, 28 seconds. ~15 minutes before sunrise.)

The header image is from ~15 minutes after sunrise. (70mm, f/11, ISO 200, 13 sec). It was worth waiting for that crack in the clouds – it finally let some color through.

If you’re interested, use this category link to see other posts about the Cocoa Beach Pier. And this album on Flickr has many images from the Cocoa area.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And when you can – make some long exposure photos – but watch out for the wind!

©2021, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

12 thoughts on “Cocoa Beach Pier

    1. Hi Dorothy,
      Yes it is great that we seem to be making a lot of progress with vaccines and we’re all starting to venture out again.
      Ed

  1. beautiful pictures of cocoa beach, was just there earlier this april, 2021. cannot wait ti go back

  2. Great pics! I was there on 4/11 and got a few great sunrise shots. Nowhere near the quality of what you have here, but was a great way to cap off a week in Cocoa Beach. Cheers!

    D. Morse
    Louisville, KY

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