Our traditional club meet up on New Year’s Eve took us to Southwold in Suffolk.
The forecast looked a little ropey but held promising signs of potential improvement as the morning progressed. Rain should’ve cleared and winds manageable.
Meet time was 07:15 and we made our way onto the beach to find our first compositions.
I started with the pier shot while it was blue hour and there were reflections in the water.
Of course, I’ve done this shot before (and better) and entered that previous capture a club competition.
I tried a long exposure as there was movement in the clouds – the one above is 30 seconds.
I tried some more shots with longer exposures but they didn’t work including one which was completely blurry due to my tripod moving in the sand.
I moved further up away from the pier and up into the promenade to capture this next shot. I’ve converted it to mono as it works best that way.
Walking a little further along where two fellow club members were shooting the beach huts, I decided to take a peek myself, but chose a shot looking back at the pier.
Turning back to the beach, I thought I’d grab a shot making the rocks a feature as well as the ship on the horizon.
I was looking for different things, and wondered what the beach huts may look like from the other side where the car park is located.
I had in my mind another long exposure as I foresaw a dramatic sky over colourful beach huts had potential for a great shot. However, the wind had considerably died down now and the image I had in my mind was not going to happen.
The sky was brighter now too further diminishing the opportunity of the shot I had in mind.
Moving back to the beach, I took my final shot with rocks and the pier, and a bit of swooshery!
The shot below has a vignette added (courtesy of a Snapseed Vintage Filter) for a bit of mood.
I quite liked a mono conversion of this shot too.
And that was a wrap! The last sunrise trip of the year 2023.
We gathered back at our cars and had our coffees and a chat about the morning’s shoot and the year.
We all agreed it was worth the trip despite the risk of unfavourable weather, and we all agreed that Southwold has so much potential beyond the pier.
We discussed a trip further afield in the new year.
With that, we wished each other best wishes for new year and made our way home.
The Golden Arches were (once again) the beneficiary of my money as I stopped off for sustenance.
With the final day of 2023 about to close, my next blog post will be to look at some of my best of the year.
Onwards and upwards…