Petty Harbour

Today's photos were taken in Petty Harbour, not far from St. John's. I was driving through the town after photographing the sunrise in Cape Spear a couple of weeks ago. I saw several boats heading towards the harbour so I drove to the wharf and waited for the boats to come in.

The first photo shows the harbour looking in from the head of the wharf that protects the narrow entrance to the harbour. As the first boat entered the harbour I quickly focused on a point on the water where I thought the boat would pass. It was too bright to look directly for very long so I had to shoot the photo very quickly. You can see a guy standing on the deck in the first image of a boat. When the second boat approached, I assumed it would pass by the bright reflection of the sun in approximately the same spot so I focused first, then photographed the boat as it approached.

These were difficult photos to capture for a number of reasons:

• the scene was VERY bright and it was difficult for me to see
• it was hard on the eyes
• the boats were moving, making it difficult to compose the image
• it was difficult to judge whether the camera was level
• it was difficult to capture the exact moment the boats passed through the reflection of the sun on the water