In 2021 I decided to refresh my photography portfolio and stop taking my usual waterfall and cascade images and concentrate on seascapes. A promising spell of weather led to a few days holiday in the North East of England.

June is not the best time to take sunrise images as it involves rising in the very early hours so it would have to be sunset for photography and the rest of the day for walks along the coastline to the pretty villages.

Although I spend a great deal of time photographing moving water in rivers I had to find out if the same range of shutter speeds worked for incoming waves. An afternoon was spent investigating different shutter speeds and focal lengths to see how this changed the textures in the breaking waves and receding backwash. I also had to work out how to remotely trigger the camera to remove camera shake as my usual 2s shutter delay made it almost impossible to line up the breaking surf to use as leading lines.

A frustrating time was spent downloading and finding out how to use the Sony Imaging Edge app but finally I was ready. In high summer in the North East the sun sets over the sea and I had a great time photographing a blazing sunset silhouetting the distant Holy Island. Returning to the car park I was greeted to a display of Alpenglow over the castle with soft pinks in the clouds reflected in the wet sand and sea so another 20 minutes of photographing before the light finally faded and the haar started to come further inshore.