Early starts for sunrise shoots can be a problem. Early starts in January less so, because of the shorter days which means the sun rises later in the morning, relatively speaking.

You may ask yourself “where is he going with this?” Just to explain, I am one of a group of three keen landscape photographers nicknamed (by us) “The Gang of Three” who meet up at various Norfolk (and occasionally Suffolk) locations to shoot the sunrise. (We also shoot the odd sunset too!) The advantages of going early (before dawn) is that there is no traffic and the car parks are always empty! Oh and you get the benefit of a decent sunrise…..sometimes. The disadvantage is that as spring comes, the days get longer and we have to meet even earlier to capture sunrises.

Our first trip out in 2024 was to Caister on Sea where the only features worth photographing on the beach are the wooden zig-zag groyne sea defences which are supposed to help protect the soft sandy dunes at the back of the beach. Due to heavy storms along the east coast and regular spring tides, the sand on the beach is moved about by the high tides, often resulting in these wooden structures being part buried or fully submerged by the sand. As it turned out it was a blustery morning and as a result the sunrise was not great.

We visited this location in May 2023 for a sunset shoot and the groynes were almost buried and what was there was revealed by a receding tide.

Our recent visit revealed a little more of the groynes and was accompanied by squally winds, a choppy sea, and a choppy, incoming tide. On this part of the east coast this is not usually a safety factor, however in other places folk have often had to be rescued having become trapped by a rapidly rising tide.

The first set of images were taken in May 2023 about an hour before sunset on a clear, balmy spring evening. The second set are from our winter shoot with an incoming tide on a cold blustery morning.

Top: One of the zigzag groynes in early evening sun; Bottom: The other structure shot with a filter to blur the incoming tide.

Looking north up the beach, the remaining structures are buried in the sand

Top: Caister Beach on a warm spring evening; Bottom: Misty Marram Grass. This is the strong tufted grass found in dunes. The mist effect is created through intentional camera movement (ICM), me moving the camera slightly up and down using a slow shutter speed.

As you can imagine, an early morning shoot in the dead of winter creates whole different atmosphere! 

Two angles showing the wooden groynes. The sand ridge from which the images are taken has been built up over the winter because of the movement of sand on the tides. The rest of the structure is buried under this sand!

The sand ridge can clearly be seen in this images.

Playing around – Similar images given some colour enhancement in post processing, and below, a mono conversion, again, slightly tweaked.

Moving further along the beach there is another visible structure which lends itself the being photographed. Much of the “swooshery” of the movement of the waves is caused by the slow shutter speed because of the lack of light, and sometimes the addition of filters.

One thing with early mornings is often the spectacular cloudscapes together with the frothy waves as illustrated in these images.

More “swooshery”. Two heavily cropped images with different treatments. I like the bottom image more for its graphic illustration in mono as it looks more like it is buried in snow than water.

After a restorative coffee and cake (or bacon sandwich for some) in a local cafe in Caister, we headed over to Thurne Mill, to our second location before the forecast rain duly arrived.

Thurne Mill was actually built as a wind powered drainage pump in around 1820 to drain the land around so that farmers could grow crops. It ceased operations in 1936 after a major breakdown and fell into disrepair. In 1950, it was bought by a local businessman who paid for its restoration and, 70 years on it is still in good working order .

It is popular place for mooring boats which sail the Norfolk Broads, but more importantly it has become a mecca for local landscape photographers.

Two images of Thurne Mill showing different light conditions. These were shot about 30 mins apart from either side of the Mill.

We are hoping for a couple more early morning shoots before the days get too long and we end up meeting at very silly-o-clock, long before any cafes are open! Here’s to the next trip out.