In With The New Part I

2022 is well and truly here, and it started very productively. In January I managed a couple of shoots at Gorleston Beach, one being a beautiful sunrise, along with a limited shoot at Caister and a very pleasing sunset shoot at Gunton, where my luck with the sky changed for the better. I’ll talk about Gunton in my next blogpost, but for now I’ll concentrate on the two shoots at Gorleston.

GORLESTON - SUNSET



I started the New Year with a lovely little late afternoon visit to my local beach. I didn’t really have any shots planned, it was really just turn up and see what happened. I opened up with a few compositions of the breaking waves around the groynes towards the south end of the beach. There wasn’t a lot of cloud in the sky when looking out to sea or south towards Hopton, so it didn’t offer too much interest in the way of texture, but given this was the end of the day, the muted sunset colours did give the scene a serene feel instead.



I also took some shots of a composition looking north towards Gorleston Pier (you can just make out the Jack-up platform in Great Yarmouth’s Outer Harbour). There was some cloud beginning to build in that direction with the light of the setting sun reflecting in it.



Once sunset had passed I decided to stayed on into the blue hour to work a few shots of the Groyne structure which was closer to the car park. It’s normally a bit busier in this area, so it’s not so easy to photograph in the afternoons, but once daylight had started to fade the beach soon emptied.
I had some real fun capturing this image. Watching and waiting for the waves to beach, seeing if the next shot was better than the last. I settled on this one as the best of the bunch.



GORLESTON - SUNRISE
My next visit to Gorleston was for a sunrise shoot. Given how late they are during the winter months, it wouldn’t be good form if I hadn’t attempted a few before they become to anti-social. I had been monitoring the weather for a week or so, and this particular Saturday seemed to offer the best chance of good light. The day itself was absolutely freezing, and I struggled to feel my fingers at times (despite wearing gloves), but this didn’t impact my enjoyment of seeing such a beautiful start to the day. When I arrived at the beach there were already one or two other photographers setting up, so I had an inkling that the conditions might be favourable after all.



Once I was set-up and shooting my attention was solely on the scene in front of me, with the occasional check up and down the water edge to see what was happening with the sky. By the time the sun was beginning to rise above the horizon, I noticed that there were quite a number of locals making the most of the weekend to see the sun come up, with most having their phones pointing towards the spectacle in front of us.
Luckily, there was a bank of cloud on the horizon, not so thick that is obscured the sun completely, but enough to diffuse the usually strong glare experienced as it comes into view. This did allow me to work slightly longer than usual and try a few subtlety different compositions. One in particular which I thought worked well was taken from a very low angle which I used to emphasise the texture of the receding waves as they ran back over a pebble bank on the shore. I normally try to look for clean sand as my foreground, but this looked so effective with the light hitting from in front of me, that would have been remiss of me to pass up the opportunity.



This image is my favourite on from this sunrise session. The sun is visible just above the horizon, but subtle enough as not to distract from the over all scene. I think I have mentioned this before, but generally I’m not a huge fan of having the sun in my images, particularly if the sky id clear and sun very bright. I find the glare created can take over the image, and so the viewer will miss other elements of the photo.
The final shot was one which does break my own rule, but again, I did mange to control the highlights in this shot so as not to make the sun a distraction, but instead a focal point, with the beautiful texture and reflected light of the sea still very much evident.



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LIMITED EDITION PRINTS
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