I woke up today and decided to head to Cohasset in an attempt to catch a sunrise. It had been a while since I was last out for a sunrise shoot, mostly because, in the summer, the sun rises early. Really early. Around 5:00 AM, give or take. But today felt like the right day to make the effort.

Sandy Beach was my target. My plan was to set up my tripod near the water’s edge and find an interesting foreground to lead into the sunrise.

To my surprise, I suddenly saw it peeking through. The sun was a perfect, glowing disc—no haze, no glare, no cloud cover to soften or obscure it. Just a clean, sharp circle of light rising over the horizon. Its edges were crisp, almost unreal, as if it had been drawn into the sky. It was one of those rare mornings when the atmosphere offers total clarity.

But there was more. Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse, sitting a mile offshore, was lining up almost perfectly from where I was standing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my long lens with me and could only zoom to 120mm, which wasn’t quite enough to capture the full drama unfolding.

So I used a trick. I switched my Nikon Z6 into DX crop mode. This changes the sensor area from full-frame to APS-C, effectively applying a 1.5x crop factor. It gave me the equivalent of 180mm of reach, right in-camera. While I could have cropped the image later during editing, using DX mode allowed me to compose more precisely in the moment and take full advantage of the available resolution where it mattered most—on the lighthouse and the rising sun.

In the end, I got the shot—and it wasn’t something I could have planned. The alignment between the sun and Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse just happened to work out from where I was standing. Using DX mode helped me make the most of the gear I had with me, and I left the beach glad I made the effort to get out there.