Morning Mist & Golden Light on the Rail Trail

This one morning on the East Gippsland Rail Trail I could feel it before I seen it, that particular stillness that kind of means something good might happen. This one was the 22nd of March 2026: freezing cold, heavy fog, and me out on the bicycle with a back-pack on at 4:30am looking for compositions.

I didn't have a bike light, so I'd been sticking to the streets with lighting — up McMillan Street towards Phillips Lane on the eastern side of Bairnsdale. There's no lighting along there, so I turned down onto the rail trail instead. Visibility in that fog and dark was down to about six feet, and people have a habit of dumping shopping trolleys in the middle of the track, so I was taking it slow, feeling my way along a trail I could barely see rather than one I could. I know it better than almost anywhere, I've cycled and run it literally thousands of times over the last eighteen years. But that morning, working my way back towards McEacharn Street, I saw light shining down through the eucalypts that I'd never seen before. Thousands of passes, and this was something new.

I knew straight away it wasn't sunrise, the sun was nowhere near up yet — so this was artificial light, a flood or security light from the industrial yard next door, with the fog giving shape and substance to the beams as they cut through the trees. I couldn't help thinking that whoever installed that light never imagined that some crazy bloke would be out on his bike at 4:30am on a freezing morning, photographing it.

I set the tripod up and worked the scene from a few angles, as much spray and pray as 20-second exposures allow. This frame, pulled back a little further down the track, caught the light rays falling across the path itself and throwing long tree shadows over the bitumen, which I liked. But that angle also opened up the view enough to show the fence line and the industrial buildings behind it, and once you can see where the light's actually coming from, the mystery goes out of it. For me personally, the tighter shot kept the source hidden behind the trunks, so the beams could just be beams. It felt rushed getting between angles, and probably was; at that hour, in that spot, anyone could come along. Of the frames I got, the tighter one was the frame with the ethereal quality the others didn't quite have.

The edit was minor, the light and the sensor did most of the work. I leaned into the contrast rather than fighting it, letting the shadows stay properly dark so the light shafts would read as the subject.

You can see it in the Places and Atmosphere gallery.