In With The New - Part II

In my previous post, I talked about two of my first shoots of 2022 at Gorleston Beach, with one being at sunset, the other at sunrise. In between those shoots was a trip to Caister Beach, which was mainly a scouting mission to the beach south of the Lifeboat sheds, and to finish the month a visit to a new firm favourite of mine - Gunton Beach, Lowestoft in Suffolk. As you will see, I had different levels of success with each shoot, but that is the way of landscape photography, you can only work with the conditions you are given!

CAISTER BEACH



Sandwiched in between my shoots at Gorleston, was a little jaunt up to Caister, where I checked out the stretch of sand south of the famous Caister Lifeboat Station. To say that it lacked any foreground interest would be a huge understatement. I did walk for quite a while along the shoreline, with only one solitary Groyne marker on show, and at the time I arrived, it was well and truly high and dry, not being touched by the sea at all. I had done my homework, and new that the tide was incoming and would be peaking around sunset, but there was a chance that a large bank of cloud would arrive at the same time.



It was a bit of a wait before it all came together, in that the rising tide did start to wash around the Groyne marker post, so I was happy in that respect. However, also correct was the cloud forecast. Any chance of a solely high cloud was disappearing n[by the minute, but….I did have small stroke of luck.



There was a small break in the cloud on the horizon to the south, just enough to let the sunlight through and reflect off the cloud above me and out to sea, not the best, but enough to add a little interest to the otherwise potentially grey mass in the sky.
As you can imagine, the compositions were very limited, due to close timings of the high tide to sunset, but I was pleased with what I came away with, even working a black and white edit of one particularly interesting water formation.



GUNTON BEACH



Next up, and after my Gorleston sunrise shoot, came a late afternoon visit to Gunton Beach, which turned out to be one of the best yet. If you have been following my landscape blog posts, you will know I have taken a number of trips to Gunton over the previous months, with varying degrees of success. The one thing I have been hoping for is a sunset with an interesting sky……



I was more than hopeful when I arrived, the clouds were high and broken (ideal) the tide was incoming (not so great, but at Gunton this isn’t a problem). It was just a case of getting my compositions sorted in readiness for sunset. My first few compositions were centred around a brick that was lying on the edge of the water, the incoming tide would be engulfing it by the time sunset arrived, so I used the opportunity to capture it while I could. I liked the way the water broke around it when receding back to sea, and shooting long exposures emphasises the patterns created.



As sunset approached, I moved along the beach to a set-up which used two Groyne structures either side of the frame to give the scene a sense of perspective. I need not have been too concerned, the sky itself turned out to be just amazing, and was definitely the best I have experienced at this location, not the most dramatic of skies, but certainly an interesting and beautiful one.



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