Patience is a virtue

Patience is a virtue, a worthy motto for a photographer and even more so for an insomniac like me out at 5:30AM to make a 30 mile trip to photograph the departure of the first flight of the day from Dundee to London City.

The planning was all in place, the weather report was favourable on the Met Office web site and even the observation from nearby Leuchars was OK. I knew about Riverside Drive being closed so I allowed time for that. I has sussed out my location months ago. Everything was in place except one thing the light mist at London this morning turned into freezing fog and grounded the flight.

I waited and waited and waited, the unstoppable sun was slowly rising, I added another stop by going down to 50 ISO, I added another two by using a 0.4 ND Filter, and another one by throwing in the ND grad filter and still nothing. I fear that if I try again I will not have dark enough conditions to get the necessary 15 to 30 second exposure to pull it off meaning that the project is dead in the water until it is dark enough in the mornings around November time.

That's the second time that this has happened to me and just goes to show that despite all the planning there is always something to fall foul of Murphy's Law - if it can go wrong it will go wrong.

Murhy's struck twice this morning not only did the fog put paid to my plans but my wide angle lens refused to work for the third time yet it was working yesterday afternoon. Looks like a dodgy connection,

At least I have a pretty picture of the sunrise over the runway and the Tay to show for my efforts.