Nearly, but not this time

I was out well before dawn yesterday, and in spite of walking some 6 miles along the coastline in the hope of good photographic light, the winter solstice slipped by under a blanket of thick cloud. 

Not so today. In fact I might have missed everything having dared take notice of what the Met Office had to offer the night before. But that tried and trusted method of look-out-of-the-window weather forecast as dawn approached paid dividends. It so often does. 

There's a fairly stiff easterly breeze blowing when I reach the beach, and the sea and sky are showing a good deal of promise. The pre-dawn images I shot were the best of the session, as with this one taken five minutes before sunrise.

© 2021

Morning walk

Today's weather forecast told of heavily overcast skies, but an expeditious break in the thick cloud during a morning walk produced enough light to make things interesting. A falling tide over a beach reshaped by a recent storm produced ever-changing patterns, and I took photographs until the light had gone.

© 2021

Shapes of things

                                                      A weather front moves slowly east along the Dorset coast.

© 2021

Storm Barra (blowy; not many fish around)

Storm Barra - the latest of who knows how many that will hit the country this coming winter - has by and large skimmed the south coast of the UK. Such atmospheric turbulence will often produce dramatic images if the cloud breaks, and having kept a close eye on the Met Office satellite images all morning I decide a visit to a local beach during mid afternoon might prove fruitful.

Annoyingly, I'm unavoidably delayed by half an hour in getting to where I intend to shoot, but that turned out to be an advantage in the end as I'm only getting the tail-end of the storm. Even so, there's a strong sea running up the beach when I arrive, but the wind has dropped noticeably. Crucially, it's not raining, and that means I'm able to keep the front element of the lens dry.

© 2021

 

Winter light

It's the first day of winter on the meteorological calendar, and I'm out well before dawn in the hope of photographing the sunrise. The intention was to shoot from a high viewpoint, featuring a local pier as foreground interest with the approaching dawn lighting the background. 

That idea was soon dashed as it began to rain as I set up; always an issue as water droplets hitting the front element of the lens can ruin an image. To add to the dilemma, the moment of sunrise happened behind thick cloud, which added no colour at all to the sky.

It wasn't until half an hour later, and once I had moved down to sea level, that the clouds parted and the sky became spectacular.

© 2021