A return to Hopton was on the cards and with an arrival time of 05:15, it would mean a rise and shine time of 04:15.

I must admit, initially I was doubtful about returning but I need not have been, as it was another epic experience – see my other two visits here.

Walking into the beach, we first scouted around and mulled over what we may target.

On our ongoing quest to try different things, we decided to see if we could concentrate on grabbing the essence of the sea and the waves.

My first shot was looking back at the rocks but with the edge of the sand as the sea water ran over the sand.

Not bad for a first shot

We were being treated to a fantastic sky and some nice colours too.

I did a few shots here but felt it was lacking interest. However, the semi-circular shaped recess in the sand intrigued me so I moved around to capture inbound sea water swooshing into it.

The light streak in the sky makes this shot

I moved further around as the water running in and back from that dip in the sand was still catching my eye.

I felt I should move to portrait orientation to emphasise this feature, and this is something both Chris Sale and Gill Moon had encouraged me to do more.

Below is a selection of shots as I experimented with different shutter speeds.

Three shots, same composition, but shutter activated at different stages of the incoming wave

The stand out shot was yet another variation of this composition and selected due to the wave and dramatic sky.

Best shot of the morning

I had a couple more shots in me, and as the light was now quite bright, I took some shots of the waves with my longer lens.

Wave shots, and converted to mono due to the harsh light

And that was a wrap.

We made our way back to our cars, opened our coffee flasks and had a debrief.

Once again, Hopton had delivered and we had a most pleasurable morning relaxing on the beach, watching the sunrise and grabbing some shots.

We agreed that our quest to look and focus on something different had delivered results.

Onwards and upwards…