Gunton Beach - Fleeting Colours & Sun Down Waves

Regular followers will have seen my recent scouting trip to Gunton Beach in my post Gunton Beach - Monochrome At Midday. 10 days after that outing I was back. This time for sunset with a hope that, unlike my previous trip, I would see some nice colour in the sky. It’s not essential to have the sky light up in beautiful reds, pinks and blues to make a great image, moody, grey skies work too, and with the forecast I had been watching that day I could have had one, or the other, or of course, neither! That is the beauty of landscape photography, plans are made, but ultimately things are in the control of Mother Nature!


I took a while before I settled on this composition. I was struggling with the lack of wave motion, but this area of the beach looked better
then other areas I had already worked.

At the time of this visit, the tide was lower than last time, so I avoided the concrete and masonry of the sea defences, which were high and dry, instead I worked the more open beach below Gunton Warren.
The Groyne structures on this beach were interesting with the tide being low, as they stood very high at of the water, revealing how much of the beach has been lost over the years. I was able to walk underneath some near the water ‘s edge, which did save me some walking distance as I looked for compositions!
As it turned out, the conditions were indeed ‘both’, although the colour was fleeting and in only a small area of the sky, which wasn’t particularly helpful! However, a cloudy, moody sky is as good in it’s own way. At least there was texture in the clouds, and not just a grey blanket, so along with the whites of the waves I was able to capture some colour images with some visual interest (interesting to me anyway…you may other ideas!)


This is my favourite image from the shoot. I really like the texture of the breaking wave combined with the
receding water trails, and the moody sky too, of course!

I did change my approach during the shoot. During the first part, the emphasis was on the receding water, looking to capture trails of foam as it wound its way back to the sea. But during the second set where I was looking towards Lowestoft, I noticed some interesting textures in the waves as they began to break in the shore. To emphasise this I shortened my shutter speed to around half a second, which was still long enough to blur the water, but slightly less than I was doing earlier. Even reviewing the images on the back of the camera I could see a painterly effect to the images I was capturing, they were almost like an oil painting. It’s a look I try to capture in all my work, but some situations make this easier to achieve, and conditions on this shoot certainly did.
The conditions weren’t what I hoped to get, but they were certainly worth staying around for. As a photographer, you turn up at a location hoping to see fantastic light, the perfect sky or other beautiful elements to your compositions, but the reality is that very, very rarely does everything align for you. Instead you have to work with what nature has given you, and apply whatever skills you possess to get the best images possible. I definitely think this shoot was one of those occasions, I'm still unsure about whether any of the images will make the portfolio, but I enjoyed my time at Gunton immensely. And I'm sure to go back until I get what I'm after....no matter how many trips it takes!


This image was one that I captured at the end of the shoot. I didn't spend much time working this as the light was
dropping off very quickly. It's definitely a composition I want to work again another time.

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