Caister Beach Sunset

I love Caister beach. Visit when the tide is right and I could lose myself for hours working compositions on this stretch of the east coast. So what better place to visit for my final shoot of 2022.
Whilst I really wanted to do a sunrise shoot here, the tide wasn’t right on this occasion, so I headed out for sunset instead.
As always with this stretch of the beach, there are a lot of possibilities as far as compositions are concerned. So it’s important to work out the best one(s) as early as possible in the shoot ready for when the light is at it’s best. The complication with seascapes is that the tide height (either rising or receding) can alter enough to change the original chosen composition. Whilst this can be frustrating, I think it does keep me thinking on my feet. Being aware of the conditions, wave patterns and, of course, the light, keeps things interesting right up until the end of the shoot. I did have a nice little distraction to cope with as well. I noticed a seal that was popping his/her head up above the waves along the stretch of beach I was working. It even came ashore for a few minutes for a breather before disappearing into the sea again. It’s always lovely to see the local wildlife when I’m out photographing seascapes, I just wish I had the opportunity to photograph some, but my usual landscape set-up doesn’t lend itself to nature photography.
Anyway back to the seascapes….. As I said in the opening paragraph, there are numerous shots available here with a lot of sea defence rocks and boulders at the edge of the shore. The key for me is to simplify the composition as much as possible. I’m looking for receding waves that create leading lines which will draw the viewer’s eye into the scene, whilst removing as much distraction as possible. Given that there are a lot of rocks on the shore in this area, it can be challenging to achieve this, but if it was too easy, there’d be no point in heading out time after time would there?
Onto the images themselves….
As usual I spent quite a bit of time photographing various scenes here, even so there were only three or four compositions I was happy with, and from those probably one or two images which will make my gallery.



In the first you can see the sunset colours are beginning to appear on the horizon. I liked the sky during this shoot, enough cloud to add some interest without blocking out any colour that might show. The texture of the water is the common theme running through all these shots, but what makes this one a little different is the colour of the rock to the right of the composition, its orange colour mimics the sky in the opposite corner of the image and helps give the picture a pleasing palette.

This next composition caught my eye due to the path of the water through the rocks. It’s not the best from the shoot by any means, but interesting textures in both the water and rocks alike.



The next two are my preferred images. It’s hard to pick a definitive favourite, as often happens that tag will change depending on my mood at the time. Both shots were taken very close to sunset, you can see the colour in the sky is a lot more intense. The first of the two composition is closer in to the foreground rocks, with the second shot, I had moved back slightly to include more of the beach and rocks.





Overall I was very happy to be seeing the year out with this shoot. I could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure! Caister is such a great location if you get the tide at the right time…next time I hope it’ll be at sunrise.

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