You can lose a morning at the coast even when the light looks promising, and the reasons are not always what you think. This video focuses on one pier shoot where timing, tide, and filters collide in ways that will feel uncomfortably familiar.
Coming to you from Jason Friend, this crisp video drops you into a cold sunrise session built around a simple idea: isolate the end of a pier and let the incoming tide do the heavy lifting. Friend sets up with a Fujifilm GFX 50S and a compact zoom, the GF 35-70mm f/4.5-5.6 WR, and you immediately see the tradeoff he is chasing. He wants the pier to read like it is out at sea, not sitting on sand, which means the water level matters as much as the sky. He also makes a choice that most people skip: he starts farther back to avoid wrecking pristine sand before the first frame, then works his way in once the composition is settled.
You also get a blunt lesson in how fast conditions slip, even when nothing dramatic happens. Friend begins with a simple panoramic approach, shifting a few steps to improve the lead-in and separation, then lands on exposures like 2.5 seconds at f/10 before the light changes. The sky is clear, the clouds never arrive, and the scene starts to feel flatter than he wanted. That pushes him toward longer exposures and a black-and-white direction, and he swaps filters while keeping one eye on the water and the other on his bag, because the tide is still rising.
The most useful part arrives when Friend rewinds his own expectations on camera and admits what went wrong. He came with a pre-set picture in mind: water around the pier, textured clouds, reflections, and peak sunrise color landing at the exact moment the tide cooperates. Instead, he reviews three frames and finds the one he dismissed first might be his favorite, with a pre-dawn pink mood he did not value in the moment. He also points out a practical planning gap: tide timing did not actually match sunrise, so the “milky water around the base” idea never had a fair chance. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Friend.
And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out our latest tutorial, “Photographing the World: Japan II – Discovering Hidden Gems with Elia Locardi!”