With all of the time that I spend photographing on the local beaches, I knew that I had to witness the spectacle when the sun set perfectly down the middle of the Manhattan Beach pier, “Pier Henge” as some call it. I captured this shot in January of 2022, and it certainly wasn’t my first attempt.
On this particular day, I went to the beach a few hours before everyone else so that I could put my tripod in the exact center of the pier. Shooting straight into the sun presents all kinds of technical and optical challenges, but after a lot of previous attempts, I had finally fine tuned my technique.
The exact moment of alignment is a surreal, even spiritual experience, almost like a solar eclipse. The underside of the pier is usually dark, particularly during sunset, so it was pretty incredible to see the water and underside of the pier bathed in warm, golden light.
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