Hopton Beach - A Tale of Two Shoots

As enjoyable as it is, making landscape images isn’t a smooth ride. As any landscape photographer will tell you, there will be many times that a shoot will be fruitless, that, even with the best planning, the conditions didn’t play ball or the light just didn’t show as you would have hoped. At times like these, you just have to suck it up, plan again, revisit another time, and hope for better luck.


The first image from shoot number one. I was looking forward to seeing how the colours developed in the sky as sunrise neared.
However, a mass of grey cloud appeared to put pay to my wishes.

This has happened to me on many occasions, so it’s something I have become very used to, and when this happens for a daytime or sunset shoot, it’s not so painful, but for a non-morning person (like myself) it hurts when a sunrise shoot goes south.
Being on the East coast of England, sunrise can be one the best times for some seascape imagery, so after my successful sunrise shoot at Gorleston back in April, I had planned to capture some dawn images at Hopton. However, it seemed that Hopton had other ideas!
I made three consecutive weekend trips to this great little location with varying degrees of success. The first attempt very early one Saturday morning was cut short as I arrived. The forecast had been promising, but as I drove along the A47 from Gorleston raindrops began to appear on the car windscreen, but the time I arrived at my parking spot, it was bucketing down, so I turned around and went back home to bed.


This shot was taken 45 minutes after the first image above. You can see how the visibility and conditions have
changed immeasurably in that short time.

The next morning was marginally better, I did manage to get to the beach and shoot some images, but after a promising start, with some nice colours showing on the horizon, a thick blanket of cloud took charge and wiped any colour away. I was left with a grey, featureless sky, strong winds, and a lot of sea spray to contend with.
Most of the images taken were pretty much useless. My filters were constantly being sprayed with sea water, and the visibility wasn’t the best. I eventually conceded that I would need another attempt…..onto the following weekend.
Now this was better in most respects….no troublesome spray, or winds to deal with, the colours in the sky were beautiful, but..and this was a big ‘but’, the water was very high. I knew the tide would be incoming, in fact I estimated to be half way up the beach, giving me scope to move about and try some different compositions. However, what I didn’t realise was that this was a spring tide, and when I arrived long before the sunrise was due, the water was already up to the sea wall. This meant that standing on the beach itself was nigh on impossible, let alone finding a number of different views. I did find a small nook to nestle into and started to capture the beautiful scenery in front of me. As luck would have it , there was group of rocks which were slightly separated from the main sea defence reef, and had water flowing and receding through them. With such a beautiful sky appearing in from to f me, it wasn’t really necessary to have a very interesting foreground, but being able to get one was a real bonus.


The first from my slightly more successful second shoot. Athough I was hemmed into a narrow raised area,
the view was more than adequate!

As with my Gorleston sunrise shoot, the best light was on show before the sun actually rose above the horizon. Where I wasn’t so fortunate was that the sun appeared quite quickly compared to six months earlier, when a bank of cloud elongated the time before the glowing orb made an appearance. As I said in the introduction, this landscape photography game is anything but predictable. Of course, I am splitting hairs, it was a huge improvement on the week before, and I came away with some beautiful images of an amazing sunrise, and spent some time outside at the best time of day. I will go back, there is much more to capture at sunrise here. I just hope the combination of conditions works in my favour nest time.


As the tide continued to rise, the rocks in front of me become more submerged, allowing me to get this composition as the sun begins
to show over the horizon.

Although I am not a morning person, I have captured a few sunrises in my time shooting landscape photos, and I can genuinely say, it is always a joy to watch. There is something very special and magical about that time of the day. I’m not sure if it is because it is generally quiet, with very few people about, or whether it’s the feeling of stillness I feel as the sun begins to come into view from below the horizon. The weather is very rarely still during these shoots, particularly during the autumn and winter months, but I think that the spectacle is so enthralling that you forget what’s happening around you, instilling a sense of peace and calm. I very rarely, if ever, walk away from a sunrise shoot feeling any kind of negativity. There is nothing like witnessing a sunrise on the coast make you feel alive!

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