Alnmouth Photography
When I come back from a photography trip and take a look through the images, my aim is to have one image that im happy with.
One image that makes the whole trip worthwhile, but I sometimes end up with a few shots that are worth keeping that just end up sitting hidden away in my computer so I’ve decided that my blog would be a good place to post these.
I decided to head to Alnmouth beach for a early shoot, high tide and the sunrise were pretty much at the same time and i’d always wanted to make a long exposure of the groynes, the wooden structures which prevent coastal erosion at Alnmouth, they keep the golf course above sea level currently!
It meant a 3.20am alarm call and a short drive from Alnwick to the beach car park, as usual, there wasn’t anybody around and I had the beach to myself. I headed North along the beach to the groynes, there are around 4 or 5 of them and they have seen better days. Due to recent rough seas, the sand level was quite high meaning much of the groynes were under the sand. Ideally I wanted to make a long exposure of these but it was still much too dark so I wandered further North to Foxton where I could see the sky turning a pinky orange.
There was some kind of signpost sticking out of the sea, i’d love to know what this is for, i’ll have to take a trip back down when the tide is out and see, its possibly a marker for boats, also, you can’t see on this image but there was a lot of small lobster and crab pot markers out on the horizon.
Once the sun had broken the horizon, I ventured back in the direction of the groynes stopping every now and then to take a few shots, the wet rocks from the receding tide made the rocks glow orange with the light from the sun, there was a heavy bank of cloud which seem to help direct the light back towards the ground.
Only two of the groynes were visible in the sea, one of them was covered in seaweed and surrounded by black coal dust in the sand so I opted for the other one, I balanced the tripod precariously on two post and set it up for a 140 second exposure using a Lee Big Stopper, this was long enough for the sea to turn into a smooth plain and for the clouds to blur as they travel in the wind.
That was the image I had wanted to capture and the others above are just bonuses, thank you for taking the time to read this, if you would like to know any more, please leave me a comment below.