At the end of the day there's nowhere better to be than on a quiet west facing beach, watching as the sun sinks slowly to towards its temporary grave over the horizon.
One of the best beaches I know for philosophising and photographing around sunset is Church Bay on the beautiful island of Anglesey, just off the North Wales coast.
Not only does Church Bay boast a cafe and toilets, the beach is also strewn with a wide variety of rocks of many hues, shapes and textures, most of which make great foreground interest in a sunset composition.
I was there in the spring of 2014 at the end of a day spent touring around Snowdonia shooting timelapse video and I was looking to finish off my day shooting a time lapse sunset sequence at Church Bay.
However, when I got there the clouds had moved in and a light drizzle was falling, with no sign of a sunset.
Never mind though, as these sorts of conditions are ideal for creating mellow, atmospheric, minimalistic images.
To convey this sort of mood required a smoothed out sea and strong foreground interest, so I used all the tricks at my disposal to keep the shutter open as long as possible (f22 aperture, polarising filter and ND grad filter) and selected this nicely shaped and textured rock as the solitary fixed element in the composition.
This gave me the feel I was after, together with a nice contrast between the fixed rock and moving water.
The only problem was the incoming tide, which meant I had to retreat up the beach as I was shooting, but even so I still got my feet wet!
Filename - rock sea 06.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 28mm
Exposure - 4secs @ f22, ISO100
Location - Church Bay, Anglesey, North Wales
This image - 533x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Tripod, mirror lock up and cable release used to prevent camera movement
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