Sunrise in Montpellier

Jan 19

Written By Jim Nix

Sometimes I get rewarded for getting up early!

I really enjoy getting up early to shoot the sunrise. I try and do that at least once on all my trips, especially in Europe. I have a major thing for European cities and streets, and being able to shoot them in the early morning hours - without anyone else around - is a purely joyful experience for me. I just get fired up about the whole thing. The caffeine helps. :-)

Now there are many times that I get shut out - meaning the light is terrible, or it's raining, or something like that. But you didn't come here to read about that, did you? :-)

I was in France back in November, and spent the first part of the trip down in the beautiful southern city of Montpellier. I rather liked the city. The core downtown area that I stayed in and photographed was very walkable - and not too large - and I found a lot of things that I wanted to shoot. And I shot the hell out of them!

One morning I got up early and headed out, while it was still deep into blue hour. When it's still dark out, it's pretty hard to tell what kind of sunrise you are going to get. There were some visible clouds, so I was hopeful. But honestly, it can go either way. It could fizzle into some gray nothingness, or it could explode into a fiery display of nature's brilliance.

Clearly, I got the fiery display.

So here's a collection of shots from that morning. Some were obviously taken while it was still dark, before Nature got all fired up for me. Of course most are from that wonderful sky that was literally on fire. I took those in or near the Place de la Comedie, which is sort of like their historic town square. My hotel was right on the edge of it - which was a perfect location for exploring the town. I literally walked out the hotel door, and in about 50 paces was in the square. Great location!

this is their opera house - quite stunning!

I have plenty more to share from Montpellier - including a couple of sunsets that were just as incredible as this sunrise. I just need to find some time to process them! But of course, I will find the time, because as I wrote in this blog post, I have some serious goals for this year!

Thanks for clicking by today!