The second one of our new favourite beaches, Broadhaven South. It's walking distance from the beach in the previous post, Barafundle Bay.
Love this beach too, although I nearly lost a welly to quicksand in a stream. Luckily there was a bolder close by that I was able to fall on and drag myself and the welly out.
I've split this post into two days. On the first day I used an Olympus E-M1 MK2 and on the second a Sony A7 MK2. On both days the images were all taken within a narrow time frame.
Day One:
All four of the images from this day were taken within 30 minutes of each other, and I've kept them in chronological order. The compositions, although not identical are very similar in all four images.
As you can see, we were there very early, and the day started very grey. There were still a a few stray rays of light coming through the clouds, so I tried to pull some detail out of the sky, and movement from the clouds using an ND filter with a 30 second shutter speed.
The clouds were closing in, and the tide was going out. Only a tiny piece of sky showed the faintest sign of light behind the clouds.
And just a little bit more. By moving a little further across the beach, I was able to get the opening in the cloud directly above Church Rock. At this point I wasn't expecting anything to happen in the sky, so I was trying to find some structure in the sand and flow of the waves.
Then 15 minutes later, the sky turned pink!
Completely unexpected, in all honesty the colours have been pulled out a bit from the RAW file, but it was still spectacular.
Day Two:
Sony day. An A7 mk2 with a 16-35mm f/4.
The next three images were taken within 15 minutes of each other. They demonstrate how quickly the view can change, how the movement of the sun and clouds can change the colours, tones, and light, as well as how these colours can be influenced by the camera settings. They also show the versatility of a 16-35mm, and what can be done by moving around the location.
I've directed the composition of this image so that the sun rise is off to the right.
A wide open shot of the beach, and there is so much going on. The sun is a little bit higher in the sky and the colours are starting to change, there is a rain storm just to the left of it, and the whole lot is reflected in the beach.
The sun made it's way to the top of the clouds to show it's full light. I used the strength of the sun to silhouette Church Rock, and a 2 second shutter speed to show some movement in the waves.
I've been using both Olympus and Sony systems as I'm still unsure of which system to go with or even keep both. Each system has it's benefits, there are some great advantages to the Olympus system, but I seem to get on better with Sony.
Stay tuned, still thinking.