When in doubt, choose Cromer, said…. No-one!
Cromer is a reliable location for photography and provides a high likelihood of finding and getting a keeper – it rarely lets you down.
The main challenge is to find something other than the pier or beach huts, assuming you haven’t done those a lot before.
A meet time of 05:15 meant a rise and shine time of 04:30.
The Shoot
We all managed to park on the road nearest the clifftop and wandered down to the promenade.
We then made our own way to our chosen locations – two other fellow photographers and I decided to bear left and take our chances further down that direction.
While they set up preparing to take the classic groyne shot, I decided to grab some shots with my fisheye lens.
The first was a multiple exposure of the nearby beach huts.
Then it was time for a traditional shot getting this group of huts all in the one scene.
I walked a little further along the prom and took this shot below which I really like due to the half circle shape in the foreground.
I couldn’t resist a shot of the pier from distance, and with the shot below, I’ve decided to zoom in and feature the end of the pier.
It was time for me to get a groyne shot…
I rushed the shot above, but I did realise later on that I had not thought enough about my composition overall, and hence the groyne post is not breaking the horizon with enough space.
I would come back and shoot it again, albeit from the other side.
The sun had risen incredibly quickly and while the light was still somewhat soft, I took another shot of the pier.
Realising that my first shot of the morning of the huts was noisy, I shot them again with better light and a tripod.
Time to get the groyne shots…
As I set up for the groyne shot, I thought I would capture some long exposures as there was a bird sitting on the post and a ship on the horizon.
I spent quite a bit of time here messing around with differing shutter speeds, and couldn’t resist taking a shot with two boats on the horizon.
I was taking quite a lot of long exposures with the post and ship in the background.
In post-production, I was messing about and thought why not take this high key idea further and push myself out of routine.
Below is a colour and mono shot with a white vignette applied – I really like this effect as something a bit “arty”.
I show a larger size mono copy of the above as I really like it – possibly not good enough for a competition but pleasing nonetheless.
It was then back to the groyne but the other side this time.
And that was a wrap.
We wandered back up towards the big slope and met up with the others – everyone seemed to have a nice morning and we were all pleased the temperature was milder such that no one wore their gloves.
Storm Kathleen had not really impacted us at all – we were expecting blustery conditions. So much so, I hadn’t even packed my drone. But we got calm conditions and a pleasant if not epic sunrise with next to nothing cloud.
We gathered our coffee vessels and had a debrief and all enjoyed the shoot.
Ronald would be holding his hand out for my money in exchange for a bacon and egg McMuffin very shortly, and I had just enough energy to remember to ask for some ketchup this time.
The sunrises are getting earlier, more and more fierce for a get up so we’re not far off moving to sunset shoots.
Onwards and upwards…