I figure you're right on both counts Lisa. I'd not sought this particular image, though I had gone to this point intentionally (the end of a pier in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia) to gain a 'light pollution free' vantage point to look for Mcnaught's Comet in January this year. I never saw the comet that night, but in waiting for the sun to set (it's about 9pm in this image) I looked around for other images to shoot.

It was a humid, warm might and I'd noticed the spray of the ocean as the waves caught on the breakwater rocks (behind me in this shot)seemed to hang in the atmoshpere, as the ocean was pretty choppy. I first noticed this as the the sun hit the top of the tower at an angle and sprayed a golden glow off into the suburbs.

As the sun set further the glow moved around pretty quickly towards my position, so of course I snapped busily for about 7 minutes, because it didn't last long at all. The gold hue and spray is due to the gold reflective tint that's applied to the top 10 or so stories of this 90 storey tower. That (and it's name 'Eureka Tower') is a tribute to the iconic gold discoveries that made Melbourne the richest and fastest growing city on the planet at that time in the 1800's.

I've set the aperture to f29 here to get the sunlight and water as sharp as the towers in the background. As the aperture was so large and technically the sun sets so quickly, I used 1/30 of a second and tripod mont so as not to blur this image.

Thanks heaps for commenting :) #4606002