Gorleston was the location of choice for a weekday sunset trip for myself and another photographer.
You can read a bit more about this location, and see what I grabbed at a similar time of year in 2023 by clicking here.
We met at 7:15pm parking on the long wide road that stretches alongside the clifftop.
Making our way to the beach, we observed lots of holidaymakers and locals enjoying the beach and a swim in the sea. It is August after all.
We found a groyne with no people swimming nearby and set up ready to start shooting.
The sky was lovely with lots of cloud detail, but we were not convinced this would be an epic sunset.
I spent quite a bit of time on the same spot looking to get a shot of the groyne and some of my favourite swooshery ~ texture in the waves with some motion too.
Where I can, I will try and adjust my camera settings to achieve the shutter speed, image effect I’m after before reaching for any filters.
For example, the shot below is at f/16 which I wouldn’t ordinarily choose, as I would be at f/11 every time, maybe as wide as f/8 but the shutter speed of 0.6 seconds is clearly what I wanted to get this shot.
As I have written about in previous blogs, when it comes to seascapes, I am addicted to swooshery!
I love swooshery, and never get bored of it. There’s excitement in capturing both motion with interesting shapes and texture in the waves.
My next shot of choice is almost the same composition but with a different wave pattern.
I really like the swirly patterns in the waves, but I like the sky better in the first shot.
After quite a while in this spot, I felt I ought to try something else, so walked up to the same groyne to shoot it straight down from the end out to sea.
It was after 8pm now so the light was beginning to fade but the clouds were looking quite spectacular.
There was not much sunset golden hour light to speak of – the little that was visible was behind us over the houses on the clifftop road.
I switched to an ultra-wide angle lens for this scene.
It is the sky that makes the shot above, and although it’s not a competition winner, I was pleased with it.
When shooting scenes like this, it’s often hard to resist a long/slow exposure, especially if you think you can capture some movement in the sky.
Out came the big stopper ND filter and I was pleased to capture this more minimalist version of the same scene.
There will be calls to convert this to monochrome like some sort of unwritten rule or law so I have done it, just to see what it looks like. But I think the colour version is more pleasing on the eye.
If you’re reading this and vehemently disagree, fair enough, it’s a free country, just keep calm and carry on as they say…
And that was a wrap.
We wandered back to our cars for a quick debrief before heading to our respective homes.
Onwards and upwards…