Spittal Beach (February 2014) - Part 1

In the last post from the 2014 Northumberland series, I posed the question about bad weather and photography in coastal location. Being February there was always going to be some dull or rainy days and actually I had been very fortunate to experience good landscaping conditions up to this point. 

My preparation for bad weather before leaving home was a visit to Spittal Beach. I had seen from other photographers some excellent close-ups of a sandstone outcrop and thought these might be best captured in flat lighting. 

I wasn’t totally sure what to expect when I went searching for this outcrop, initially wondering whether I was in the right place. It was only when I looked closely that I started to see a myriad of different patterns and colours and in between rain breaks spent the rest of the day immersed in the subject. 

I remember spending a lot of time setting up the tripod, trying to get a level on an uneven surface, wondering about depth of field, considering focus stacking and all sorts. I was very keen not to fail technically. 

In the background, I was also backing up and testing compositions on a compact camera. It was easier to handhold, see the composition on the screen, and then set up the main camera - a process that meant I had hundreds of images when I returned home and most of the compact camera shots were never processed... until now. 

With all the images now in a Lightroom collection it is not obvious which image was taken with which camera, except for some square format shots which I definitely took with the compact camera. I am therefore happy to treat each photo on its merits and, as there isn't room to show all the results, I have picked out some for this post whilst holding back the square format shots for part two: