Botany Bay
FEBRUARY 3, 2023
2023 has started and my instinct is to get out more with my camera. Searching for locations around London and the East Coast of England is always a tricky one for me as I tend to photograph more mountains and lakes, which I prefer. However due to my location its not always easy to get to the grand vistas and I have to find more locations closer to my home in London.
Botany Bay is a couple of hours drive on the Kent Coast in the East of England and is famous for its chalk sea stacks and white cliffs. I hadn't been to the location before and decided to visit for a sunrise shoot. Here are a few of those images I captured, before and after sunrise.
This first image was captured just as the sun was rising just behind the cliffs to the right of the frame. I always find it difficult to find compostions with seascapes and after a lot of walking up and down the beach I decided on the compositon of the sea rocks in the foreground postioned centraly with the cliffs to the right and the sea rocks to the left to give the image some balance. A longer shutter speed was used to capture the movement in the water.
This is the same location and I decided to try a different compostion and wanted the scene to be a bit more immersive. I waited for the tide to come in and lowered the tripod down to get closer to the rocks for them to have a more dominant role in the image. I prefer this image to the first but its always good to try different compositions of the same scene as some work well and others not so much.
The sun is now just peering above the cliffs and most of the colour has gone leaving a warm glow in the clouds. This is another composion a bit further back along the beach, the tide is coming in fast and the other rocks had submerged. This composition was again with the rocks in the foreground but I wanted to get the curveture of the beach in the scene which you couldn't see from the other images above. I emphasised the foreground and waited for the waves to crash over the rocks and as the tide came in you can see the curveture of the beach leading to the cliffs in the distance.
The sun was truly up now for this image and it's showing it's strength. The tide kept coming in and I was forced to move back along the beach and search for another compositon. I found this pool of rocks which has a bit more separation from the prevous images and although I had seen these rocks prior to capturing the other images, they were just lying on the beach without any water around them. I like the way the rocks act like stepping stones through the image.
Now that the sun had come up, there was only a bit of golden light left in the clouds. I saw these rocks with a single rock in the foreground which I wanted to capture. For this image again I had the tripod down low to exaggerate the foreground rock and tried different shutter speeds. It's all fun and games when you try to get the timing right of the wave paterns along with your shutter speed and this is resulting image.
This final image is one of the chalk sea stacks. There is still a glimmer of golden light left which is backlighting the stacks and the clouds above. I like how the light is shooting through the stack and the cliff and lighting the stack in the middele of the cliff and larger stack. I used a longer shutter speed to capture the now rougher sea.
Actually this is the final image, the obligitory selfie! This was an amazing morning on the coast and even better as it was meant to be an overcast day with lots of grey clouds. I took the long drive in the hope of some light even if fleeting but was blessed with a stunning sunrise!
I hope you enjoyed the images and if you do want to see more of my adventures please do follow me on my social media pages.