This week’s destination was Thornham as the forecast advised of a high tide and with a meet time of 06:00, it was a fierce 04:40 alarm call!
It was bracing on the North Norfolk coast (temperature just above freezing) and fog was in the air which was unexpected.
We parked our cars, got our wellies on and got our gear ready to go, we had a scout around and wondered if this would be a wasted morning.
When met with such adverse conditions, and to be fair on rare occasions, it can result in just not getting the camera out at all (recent trip to Cromer being an example), or you need to get the camera out and have a try to see for sure whether or not there’s anything worth a punt.
We did the latter.
I quite liked the look of this boat so grabbed a shot.
Once I started clicking, I was starting to feel more upbeat and could feel the mojo ramping up. The conditions were shit really but I was hunting for compositions, practicing my art, being more thoughtful about what might make a good capture.
There’s a valuable lesson here, and one which many Pro photographers (Nigel Danson for example) state which is you won’t learn or get anything by staying at home. So true.
Next up, I zoomed out and decided to get a wider scene and I like the size difference in the mooring stations as well as the diagonals of the grassy areas. Such a shame the sky was so dull, but you’ve got to go with what’s in front of you.
Maybe I’ll look to replace that sky and post this up online. Bite me!
I’ve done a mono conversion but not sure it beats the colour version.
Behind where I was standing, there was this boat which I thought looked nice with the mist in the background.
I was being thoughtful and careful with consideration to composition. I’ve been writing for ages about wanting to improve my composition. To be honest, if conditions are good, I do have a tendency to rush into grabbing shots. I can’t help myself.
On this morning, thanks to dull conditions, I had to work for it a lot more, and ironically it’s helped me.
This was my lot for stills shots, and it was time to meet up and reflect how we had found the morning so far. We all agreed that it was worth working hard to try and find something.
The three of us present this morning all had drones so we were debating whether or not to send them up.
After some Yes/No debates, we decided we would do and I suggested one at a time so went first, set up and launched.
The shot below gives a good view of the area and the extent to which the high tide had come in, which wasn’t enough to flood the road like we had witnessed at very high tide on a sunset shoot last September – see here.
I flew back from this position as I had already spotted earlier from the ground lots of paths and water channels, and I think these look awesome.
I grabbed another similar scene below but that one has the water and some moorings.
I landed to make way for my fellow drone pilots and felt straight away that this a location to return to in order to get more extensive shots of the area.
I can see me rushing with the shots has resulted in less than competent compositions. In the harbour shot, I’ve clipped and missed the estuary out to sea (see top right of the image), and in the ‘vein’ shots, I think I would’ve done better to concentrate on one element and get that as a point of interest rather than a random tapestry of things.
All good learning though and it didn’t take away from the enjoyment of the flying. And I still love these shots, and the perspectives I’m getting.
And that was a wrap.
We headed back to our cars to change our of our cold-protective gear, and moved up the road for breakfast at Thornham Deli.
A superb breakfast, a good chit chat about all things photography capped off a very enjoyable morning. Such a contrast from the feelings when I first turned up on location.
Onwards and upwards…