Myself and another photographer were the visitors to a Sunday evening sunset shoot at Happisburgh.
Erosion and car parking impact outside of peak times
Such is the aggressiveness of the erosion, the cliffs are now being lost at such pace that the car park is under threat.
There is talk of an alternative car park being made, but according to a press article 15th January 2024, this won’t be until the existing car park is ‘rendered unusable’.
Given the popularity of the location, it seems that it would be more sensible to start planning a new or revised car parking facility sooner rather than later.
The article also cites residents frustration that this is issue is dominated by thoughts of tourists needs rather than the needs of residents.
Whilst this is understandable, letting the car park fall into the sea before anything is planned or built surely means a higher risk of tourists parking closer to the homes of residents?
The challenge for photographers ref parking cars
The main issue for photographers who tend to turn up super early or stay to sunset/blue hour is that the option to park outside the gate is becoming more and more limited.
In this row of parking spaces outside the gate are sections fenced off and piles of earth sitting where we would’ve once parked our cars.
Therefore, on this visit, we parked in the main car park.
Still images
With a low tide, we walked northwest for a while to do a recce, then found ourselves back at the metallic remains of an old sea defence.
The ‘low tide’ was not as far out as we had been expecting, and the waves looked quite aggressive and high.
No complaints with this, since we work with what nature provides to us.
I’m not particularly keen on those tall posts that align this part of the beach so I decided to pitch on this spot for most of the evening.
Staying in one spot to shoot images means I have to hope that some crumbs of creative thinking can emerge!
I started just shooting what was in front of me, with my favourite swooshery style, trying to capturing texture in the waves.
I was enjoying this, just shooting to get splashing water through the metallic structure but timing things to catch a wave too.
This isn’t straightforward to get right since I have a two second delay timer set to settle the camera down from any potential camera shake, so I’m already needing to estimate the right time to deploy the shutter.
It’s part of the ‘fun’ I guess in catching an image just right.
But I wasn’t thrilled or even content with the compositions from this spot.
In post-production, I looked to crop in and get a bit more intimate with my image output.
I quite liked the following image as it captured many different elements.
Drone images
After capturing a lot of images of this scene, and checking the relevant apps for the all clear, it was time to send the drone up.
I’ve recently written about the classic drone video and capture of the downward looking groyne and wave shots, and I was determined to see what I could get different on this evening.
I also remembered to set bracketing on the drone as this setting doesn’t stick when you switch the drone off.
My intention with setting bracket shooting was that the drone can take three images rapidly in quick succession with differing exposures, which I can the blend together later to produce an HDR image with a wider dynamic range.
Of course, you will most likely shoot the lighthouse if you’re in Happisburgh!
Despite the novelty of waves and groyne shots, I captured the following shot, not top-down but at an angle.
Next up was a shot of the church which I’m quite pleased with…
The evening light was dropping now as we were at sunset.
My final shot of the evening is my favourite, which is a northwest view of the coastline and the sun falling.
I really like the relaxing vibe and the simplicity of this image.
Yes, it’s ’just another coastal shot’, but it’s the time in the evening, the warm tones of the setting sun, the colour tones with warm yellows on the left, and colder blueish tones on the right, plus the incoming waves.
And that was a wrap.
We wandered back up the beach, and to the car park where someone was waiting for us and a couple of other cars to vacate the car park so they could lock it up for the evening.
Just as well we had arrived back in time!
Onwards and upwards…