For a week, I had been wondering what the sunrise was going to be like on Saturday morning of that weekend! I had everything planned out perfectly. We would leave the house at 4:45am, meet up with several other photographers outside the park at 5:40am, hike in the dark to an overlook inside the park, and be ready and set up at 6:00am for blue hour and then sunrise at exactly 6:46am. It was going to be epic!

But I knew it was also going to be a challenging location to shoot the sunrise. I had spent hours poring over maps, looking at photographs, and calculating the angle of the sun to determine which of the 10 overlooks in Tallulah Gorge State Park, Georgia, would be the best place for the EXPLORE Meetup to converge for sunrise. The 1000ft deep gorge zigzagged in a southeastern direction, which meant the sun would only be visible across the gorge at this time of year, instead of the ideal location of being visible when looking down the gorge. After much deliberation, I decided our odds would be the greatest at Overlook #6. Not only was it a short walking distance from our meetup location outside the park, it was also at a higher elevation than most of the other overlooks, increasing our chances of getting a good sunburst as early as possible when the sun crested the horizon across the gorge. But it was still far from an ideal vantage point. We would need some good, colorful clouds to make it worth the effort to be there so early.

Things started off so well! We left the house at a good time. The timing of our meeting with the other photographers was impeccable. Our flashlights guided us in to the park down the short trail to the deserted overlook. Not a soul was around! The sky was just starting to turn blue. We had done everything just right.

But there were no clouds in the sky at sunrise. Or at least, there were very few.

Without anything in the sky to include in a photo, we were compelled to resort to exposing for the foreground mostly.

With the hope of a colorful sunrise now gone, I comforted myself with the fact that at least our position was a good vantage point for the first moments of golden hour. The moment the sun crested the horizon, captured as a sunburst, the foreground trees would light up golden green and finally we could have some color and dimension in our photos. And without clouds, what a fantastic golden hour it was going to be!

But guess what decided to get in the way of the sun, right as it reached the horizon? A bank of clouds that had come from who-knows-where, reached in and blocked the light before it had time to light up the canyon. This was the best sunburst I could get before the sun disappeared behind the bank of clouds.

It was such a disappointment!

Normally, I would have patiently waited for the sun to rise above the thin stretch of clouds. The problem was, there was another deadline we had to reach that morning. You see, in order to explore the bottom of the gorge later that day, we had to be at the park entrance at least half an hour before the park opened. To keep the gorge from getting overcrowded, only the first 100 people to arrive at the park in the morning are given passes to go down into the gorge. We needed to be at the entrance at 7:30am, and it was now 7:10. It was at least a 15min walk to the entrance and we had just received word that people were already starting to line up at the gate. If we didn’t leave within the next 5 minutes, we would be forfeiting our chance to go down in to the gorge at all.

My hope for a gorgeous sunburst and golden hour had vanished away as well.

We waited for the clouds to pass until the very last minute. Actually, 4 minutes past the last minute. At 7:19, we finished snapping our final shots and then started rushing around the gorge to the park entrance. We arrived a few minutes after 7:30, and none too late. Our group of 10 was in the last half of the line of 100.

Once in line, we watched the photogenic light of golden hour fade away as we waited for the park to officially open and slowly go through the process of entering the building and getting our passes. A ranger sat us down, inspected footwear, gave us maps, and explained just how strenuous a hike this was going to be. In the back of my mind I was thinking, “How strenuous could this be? I’ve been on very strenuous hikes before. Surely this couldn’t be that difficult!”

But it turned out to be every bit as difficult as the ranger said it would be! Especially in light of all the camera gear we were bringing down with us! What an adventure it turned out to be. Exactly what happened in the gorge that day will have to wait for a future blog post. 🙂

What had happened that morning made me feel rather disappointed. No colorful sunrise, no sunburst when the sun crested the horizon, no epic golden hour photos. But was my joy going to be wrapped up in the success of the day? No, I had to make a choice right then and there to trust that God knew what He was doing. He was in charge of the sunrise. He was in charge of the clouds. He knew what a crazy time we were going to have in the bottom of the gorge later that day! Would I trust that He would indeed work out all things together for good to them that love Him? Yes! I would. And even though I didn’t feel joyful in that moment as we stepped out of the ranger station into the harsh, mid-day sunlight, I was at peace that He was in control, and I didn’t have to be upset about anything at all.

Turns out, now that I’ve been able to look over the photos from that Saturday, it wasn’t as bad of a golden hour as I originally thought. I was actually able to get a pretty nice photo the minute before we rushed off to get in line at the park entrance. Half way up the thin stretch of clouds there happened to be a very small break. Just enough to let the sun shine through with the strength it needed to light up the trees on our side of the gorge in golden green. It was only for a few seconds, but it was all that was needed! Here’s what I got at exactly 7:18am.

An Underwhelming Sunrise
Tallulah Gorge State Park, Georgia
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If you would like to see more photos from our day at Tallulah Gorge, click here to view a collection of all our favorites!