Buffalo City Hall from the Marina First off, no, I am not going to claim this is a current photo. Despite the brief visit of summer temperatures the boats are safely tucked away and the marina is free of any vessels. I have included this summer photograph just to illustrate how much I really enjoy revisiting locations in different seasons, different weather, different time of day, or just to see what is going on.

This photo specifically was published in the 2013 Buffalo Niagara Calendar. Successes like that can further serve as an encouragement to nourish a particular location despite the small likelihood that the same publication would run a similar photo any time soon.

This time of the year I'd normally be itching to get a nice winter-like photo of the same location with no boats and open water, just ice and snow. I knew that was not happening this weekend but I figured a cloudy sunrise would still look quite different from the blue sky of summer so I went for it. Unlike sunsets that bring quite a few people to the marina watching the sun disappear over the lake and the Niagara River in Canada, sunrises do not have that power. The sun appears behind the skyline of Buffalo, and the time of day is not convenient to most sleeping in. But that is a nice thing about this time of the year too. Sunrise at quarter to eight, who'd complain about that? Summers are much tougher from that point of view! Bottom line, it's only couple fishermen and me there.

In the past, I sometimes arrived too close to the sunrise missing all of the pre-sunrise colors in the eastern and western sky. I took advantage of the late winter sunrise and arrived about 45 minutes ahead of time. Sky was cloudy, maybe a little too much, but I enjoyed the colors bouncing around and especially the western sky over the Buffalo Lighthouse showed some nice pinks. I also worked the view across the marina a bit, varying compositions, trying panoramas, setting up some shots for a possible HDR, and more.

Then I stepped through one of the open gates to a boat slip and looked towards the observation tower at the and of the marina. The sky was still deep blue in that direction (north) and the street lights were still on, which I did not expect. I set up my tripod on the slip, framed the street lights leading towards the tower with the slips in the foreground, and with some of the gold glow of the lamps reflecting in the water. I captured the below photo and one more a little wider and book, the lights went out, one row first, a few seconds later the other.

Erie Basin Marina at Daybreak

Early Morning Blue Hour with Glowing Street Lights at the Erie Basin Marina, Buffalo, New York (NY).

So yet again, plan your shooting, show up, and allow the moment take you in any direction that happens to present itself! Have fun!