Things don’t go to plan

Hunstanton Beach

Friday Jun12 2020 -

Finally, I’m allowed out legally and technically, checking the weather my local area is going to have a rough day of dark grey skies and rain. I decide to get away.

Looking online Hunstanton becomes the destination, a lengthy beach, with an old Victorian lighthouse topped by some spectacular cliffs and a bizarre rock strewn beach. The weather? warm, 18-19 DegC, patchy cloud. With high tide at around 22:30 that gave a good hour or so around golden/blue hour to get some shots of the sun going down along the cliffs.

However, on arrival the problem was evident, the weather was awful. Thin mist covered everything, the beach was only partially visible from the cliffs, the sea couldn’t be seen from the beach, disaster.

I often hear that Landscape photography is a lot of luck, and part of the trick is increasing that chance by being in the right place at the right time, well this day luck wasn’t with me.

Hunstanton Cliffs

Foggy, Grey, not what i wanted

Well it had taken nearly 2:30 hrs to reach the beach, so I wasn’t leaving without trying to get a few pictures, and 4 hours was spent wandering up and down the beach and cliffs in search of a good (ish) shot or two.

Some wood from some old structure on the beach became the first opportunity for a shot, long exposure to smooth out the sea, close to the edge of the waves, zoomed to compress the depth of the image, tripods out.

Hunstanton Beach

Lessons learned, dull day, unstable tripos, rubbish picture. Better luck next time.

Of the 6-8 photos I took of this location, this is the best one, and its rubbish. The weather too foggy for the shot i wanted, the sky too grey to give it any contrast, and to top it off this shot is the sharpest of the bunch, and even then its still soft. Now I know why I see you tubers placing CDs onto the sand for their tripods to stand on, the softness of the pictures I got are, I believe, due to the tripod slowly sinking into the sand. End result a lot of blurry, useless photos.

And that sums up my trip, small mistakes ruining photos, the weather blurring the sea with the sky, and the rain frustrating all day.

ultimately 3 shots make the cut, barely, nothing ground breaking, nothing amazing. A shot of the cliffs and beach, one of the wreck of the sheraton, and the last of the lighthouse through a ruin. All will be added to a new page in my travel shots, but I feel on the fence about what I think about all of them.

But thats what happens, sometimes you plan everything right, and yet the weather lets you down anyway.