Mooloolaba Beach is one of Australia's most famous beaches. Located on the beautiful Sunshine Coast, Mooloolaba boasts a lengthy stretch of stunning white sand with a series of rock pools and ledges at the northern tip. With a sub-tropical climate year round, it's a popular holiday destination - especially for those in the cooler southern states.

Since we launched our Mooloolaba Gallery in July of 2022, I have been down to Mooloolaba Beach early in the morning quite a few times but always been greeted with overcast or clear skies - neither of which are any good for sunrise photos!

In January of 2023, I flew to the Arctic for 5 weeks to catch up on 3 photography tours that weren't able to proceed in previous years (due to Australia's lengthy border closure). A couple of days before I left, I found the motivation to rise at 4am again and head down to Mooloolaba Beach to familiarise myself with a new lens I had recently acquired.

When I arrived in Mooloolaba I could already see some colours appearing in the sky, it was looking very promising! I raced down to a series of rock ledges a couple of hundred metres from our Mooloolaba Gallery and setup my camera. I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the light would peak so I had to act quickly. I took a look at the swell size and tide height then made a quick assessment of where I thought the best opportunity would be. I found this beautiful little rockpool and composed my photo towards the rising sun.

Only seconds later, as the sun hit the horizon the sky lit up beautifully! As the sunrise peaked, I used a slow shutter speed to blur the wave (and clouds) just a little and give them a beautiful painterly effect.

I took a moment to thank God for the opportunity to witness and capture such an amazing moment. Feeling blessed I returned home, confident that I had finally captured something special from beautiful Mooloolaba Beach!