A late afternoon wander around Lowestoft beach and seafront provided an opportunity for a good walk, some sea air, and some casual photography.
Shooting intent
I took my smaller camera, a 105mm macro prime, and would shoot handheld only.
The images I took have subsequently been edited and grouped together to form a series of triptychs.
Start of the walk
As we walked from Pakefield church down to the beach and along the beach huts, an abandoned bucket caught my eye.
I took a few shots here and enough to compile another set.
As I had a macro lens on, it would be churlish not to take some close up shots. I targeted the padlocks on the beach huts.
It was convenient to grab some shots of other features of the beach huts.
I was really enjoying looking carefully for things of interest, but there was a slight drifting into randomness.
We wandered further down the promenade and I was capturing anything that caught my eye.
I’ve told myself that this is fine, and that sometime after capture, I can challenge myself to see if the images can work together.
This may well be frowned upon as a lack of ‘intent’? However, who cares? Who is watching? Who is judging? Me, ultimately. And I deem it acceptable so there…!
I am experimenting, trying things, thinking differently, seeing if I can muster a little more creative thought.
I’m working on my worth, I’m working on my work, I’m working on who I am, I’m working on what is wrong, what is right, and where I am. I know my worth, I’m not the worst you told me once I was.
(2024, You Should Not Be Doing That, Amyl and the Sniffers).
As we continued our walk, and Kathryn had to move ahead of me as I had been spending quite a while shooting those padlocks.
The necessity to get in close required me to activate the focus limiter on the lens which saves the camera going in and out of full focus.
It’s almost impossible to walk in this area without shooting the beach huts so my next trio of shots, I’ve got:
- The modern huts which will cost you £30k for a 15 year lease
- A shot of the coastguard’s station that could make you think you were in Miami
- A shot of a couple just relaxing on the beach watching the waves.
As we continued meandering along the promenade, we were taken aback by just how many gulls there were.
Quite a sad sight was observing several gulls shaking empty plastic bottles, and one in particular shaking an ice cream wrapper which appeared to have nothing of sustenance for it.
We walked further along where the café sits, which used to be ‘Flying Fifteens’. We have fond memories of bringing my two offspring here as kids where tea and cake were always well received.
The lady who used to run it always had a humorous but slightly barbed news update in the front of the café’s menu.
The latest news usually made reference to her husband, who had left her, and it seems had done that thing… traded her in for a younger model, and abandoned her.
I recall one update which reported the ‘sad’ news he had passed, with a suspicion that, in her eyes this had been a sad demise, but some form of retribution brought on by his misdemeanours.
These news updates may have made one or more eyebrows twitch, but they added to the experience of enjoying the fabulous ‘real’ teas and superb cakes, while wondering what would be in the latest news updates.
Back to photos
We decided to move onto the beach for our walk back to Pakefield, and given the recent club sunset shoot where I took some shots of Claremont Pier from the right hand side, I took some shots from the left side.
My next set showcases the gulls footprints in the sand, a metal detectorist with two detectors in use, and two ladies braving the cold seawater by walking in for a dip.
I had a collection of shots which seemed to suit a monochrome conversion.
As we left the pier and wandered up the beach, we were approaching the walking men sculpture.
Knowing that these will be removed soon, we couldn’t resist taking some shots.
We were at the about to climb the path up from the beach to the clifftop when I spotted something of interest.
End of the walk
One final capture as we got to the Pakefield beach huts was this odd item poking up into the sky. I looked up the Omniflow brand to discover this is a smart (Internet of Things) lamppost powered by wind and solar energy.
And with that, we walked back to Pakefield, and called by the highly recommended Pakefield Plaice chippy for supper.
For a walkabout, I had collected some interesting images, and am pleased with what I got, and my triptychs.
Onwards and upwards…