I headed to Seaford and the surrounding areas for a much needed afternoon and evening out with my camera yesterday.
My first stop was Seaford sea front, arriving soon after high tide, and it was rather breezy. That created some crashing waves and I decided to use my 100-400mm zoom to try to capture those waves and to concentrate on detail.
There was quite a bit of spray being carried by the wind, so I wrapped a cloth around my camera.
After sitting a while and thinking about my next location, I opted to visit High & Over which lies on the outskirts of Seaford on the Alfriston road. There is a small and free car park up there and easy walking paths afford some spectacular views over the River Cuckmere and the surrounding East Sussex countryside.
Turning 90 degrees to the right from the view above, the views stretch out over the meandering river to Cuckmere Haven where the river meets the sea.
Swapping lens to the 100-400 allowed me to zoom in to that view and capture the further detail.
With the time moving onwards, it was off to Seaford to grab some dinner from my favourite fish and chip shop there. Then, having eaten dinner, my evening destination was Birling Gap - part way between Seaford & Eastbourne.
My plan was to catch the sunset with colours reflected in the stretch of wet sand that low tide exposes - something that I have done before and I know can provide great images.
As I had a couple of hours to use ahead of sunset time, I headed out onto the shore to see what I could capture before sunset - maybe streaky wave movement of the incoming tide.
What I was greeted with were great reflections of cloud formations and blue sky in that wet sand.
With wet sand also stretching out behind me, I turned to notice that the clouds were very well reflected in that direction as well - I have learned at this location that it is worth looking at the scenes behind you when taking sunset pics.
I continued to shoot these amazing reflections looking in both directions as I explored the angles and compositions and got several really pleasing photos. Eventually though two things scuppered my actual sunset photo plans.
Firstly, a large bank of cloud took over the horizon to the West and secondly the incoming tide reclaimed the stretch of wet sand before any sunset colour was possible.
This turned out to be a day when the time difference between low tide and sunset was just too great - a couple of hours meaning that the tide was in too far for my stretch of wet sand and sunset to coincide.
Those two reasons called a halt to my shooting for the day, but that did mean that I would be home a little earlier than originally expected.
I returned home very happy with my trip out and very excited to download the photos to view on laptop screen rather than just the back screen of the camera.
It transpired that I was right to be excited, as I have plenty of very pleasing photos from just the one trip out. Variety and colour from an inspiring trip to the coast. Occasionally, I have days where everything just 'comes together' and I get photos that I am really happy with and yesterday was definitely one of those days.
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