This week’s sunrise outing nearly didn’t happen…
A busy week and insufficient sleep meant I wasn’t sure I would get up.
Usually when I’ve decided I’m doing a sunrise, I get up as soon as the alarm sounds.
This week though, the snooze button was pressed twice in a row and I knew I had to make a choice between getting up and out, or sleeping in.
I got up, and wow, I would be pleased I did…
The shoot
I got to Overstrand later than I would’ve wanted and spotted the car of a fellow photographer already parked up and he was on location.
The sky was only just showing some colour, but I wanted to get moving so parked up, got my wellies on, gear ready to carry and briskly walked towards the slopes down to the promenade.
As I walked at speed down one of the two steep slopes, I felt myself almost jogging down uncontrollably propelling myself down.
My feet hurt a bit as I dug my toes down as a sort of human brake. I was not aware at this point I had hurt myself – more later.
From the slope, I spotted my fellow photographer on the boat launch slope shooting some swooshery, said Hello then had a look around.
I walked along part of the concrete deck at the side of the slope and took my first shot.
I moved along this walkway a bit more and thought perhaps some minimalism was in order.
The post was an obvious target as well as the groyne, and I have several different edits of this scene.
The post was worth being a feature on its own.
I wandered further along and round the corner to see if it was worth shooting back at the lovely pink sky we were witnessing.
I grabbed the shot below which originally troubled me with the railings, but the more I look at this capture, the more I like it, and I think it’s my favourite from this shoot.
I’ve seriously reduced my editing on this shot and posting it up on the ‘Ol Insta’ was worried that I’ve gone too far towards bland, but it’s done no worse than some of my best images.
I zoomed in to get closer to the posts and groyne, and I’m quite pleased with the framing in this scene.
There was one more attempted minimalist shot which has gone into the bin, as it turns out I’ve underexposed it so much I can’t pull the detail of the posts back.
For my final stills shot of the morning, I walked back round the corner and took a shot from boat launch slope.
On revisiting, I think the shot above isn’t a bad effort.
Time had marched on and I knew we needed to be back at the car park before 08:00 when the tickets need to be purchased.
There was just enough time to get the drone up.
I flew about quite quickly and took just three shots of the long row of beach huts, which I’m quite pleased with as something of a documentary shot.
And that was a wrap.
With both of us conscious of the car park times, and the sun now up and bright, we met up again and made our way back to the car park.
Coffee and a debrief was in order and we met a lady who asked us if we were geologists. As tempting as it was to pretend we were, we ‘fessed up that we were photographers and chatted about the changing coastline.
We departed Overstrand and I was heading to RSPB Strumpshaw Fen to call in to see if I could capture any birds.
One of Ronald’s McShite outlets was near there so I dialled that into the satnav and off I went.
It was at Strumpshaw where my luck was in – so much so, there’ll be a separate blog post coming soon.
Injury
Unbeknown to me, I’ve hurt my foot. Although I felt nothing much at Overstrand or Strumpshaw, but the time I got home I realised my Achilles was hurting a lot.
I’ve been limping around, and checking in with the 111 service, it appears the advice is to continue with RICE.
I’ll persevere and see where this gets me… it’s certainly hindered me moving around, and is generally very frustrating.
In terms of a sunrise trip to Overstrand, I enjoyed it and glad I rolled out of bed.
Coming to the blog soon will be what I captured at Strumpshaw.
Onwards and upwards…