It was cold, wet and windy, but the sun was setting, so I grabbed a few shots as the sun sank behind the pier. The wave patterns in the foreground sand add a wonderful foreground interest to this shot.
Southport and Ainsdale beaches are vast, flat and featureless. As a photographer you have to latch onto any object of interest, even if it is a solitary shell in the middle of that vast, featureless expanse of sand. It’s a good job I like minimal photographs as the Sefton coast lends itself to this sort of shot!
This is another shot from my 2 minute dash to the dunes by the Lido at Ainsdale. Isn’t it strange, despite that fact that I wasn’t living in Southport when the Lido was the Lido, it’s still called that.
I like the soft and pale tones that I managed to capture in this shot – a little bit different from the usual heavily saturated sunset photos that you see. I think it captures the mood of the time. Soft and gentle rather than harsh light.
Driving back from an appointment in Formby the sun was sinking fast as I approached the Pontins roundabout. After a long day I was keen to get home, and the light was weak, not stunning. I decided to give it a chance and headed for the Lido car park. The wind was blowing the sand off the top of the dunes, I had to walk backwards over the crest. The light was poor, there was no time to get the tripod, so I upped the ISO and took a few shots. A lot of the shots were too slow, and blurred, but I managed to grab a couple of nice images. This Ainsdale Beach sunset shot was just as the sun was half way gone. The colours can go a bit strange at this time of the day, but I like the results…
You can’t beat the combination of seaside marram grass and clouds with a sliver of sea in between – a cloudscape with marram!
My favourite spot in Southport to photograph light trails is the Marine Way Bridge. There’s one spot where you can safely set up your tripod and snap away. I blended this image from several identically exposed shots in order to combine the light trails from all the images.