In Camera...Dramatic Light at Crosby Beach

Just before the storm. The beach at Crosby is eerily quiet, only the raucous cry of a lone gull disturbs the humid threatening air. The pale sand, dry after days of hot sun, reflects a false brightness against the dark of the heavy rain filled clouds spreading in from the sea. The wind farm on the horizon is scarcely visible through the sweep of rain heading north just off the coast. The rusty iron men seem to glow, their colours saturated by the strange light off the sand.

Last Wednesday evening the weather changed dramatically from sunlight to storm, a few days of hot humid weather came to an end with a cold front and thunderstorms passing over England from the South West.
Late afternoon there were a few rumbles of thunder and I decided to go down to the beach in the hope of capturing some lightning flashes. I did not see any lightning, but the horizon out to the west was obscured by heavy rain and the sky was very dark out at sea.
Here on Crosby beach the sand near the promenade was very bright and dry after a few days of heat and low tides and seemed to reflect the light from the bit of bright sky left overhead before the storm clouds rolled in. This light seems to fill the iron men with saturated colour, especially vivid against the dark clouds out at sea.

In Camera...Magical Hot Summer Night at Crosby Beach

I love the contrast between the hot red sky and the cool blue of the water

Last week we had a day of summer, the last day of June, when the temperature reached 30C. It was a day of sparkling clarity and I set off for the beach around 21.45 in the hope of seeing the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, this was a night when the two planets were close together in the western sky and should have been visible just after sunset. When I arrived at the beach the whole north western sky was orange with the afterglow of sunset, the air temperature was still showing 28C, the air was still and the tide was sweeping in across the level sands. To the South a full moon was rising, its silvery glow reflected off the sea between the beach and the docks at the southern end of the beach.
I walked along the rapidly advancing water's edge, taking photographs as they appear, the glowing sky to the north does not seem to fade, it is a long lingering twilight.

These two people just walked past me in the late evening light, I turned the camera from the sea to capture their silhouettes against the glowing twilight. 

Even later the sky still glowed with light, the bright orange spot on the horizon is a flare from a gas drilling rig out at sea.

Moonlight reflects off the incoming tide.

The sky was cloudless apart from a thin streak of high cloud which seemed to be positioned between me and the planets I was seeking but eventually my patience was rewarded and I captured the image below of Jupiter and Venus close together the western sky as the tide lapped around my tripod.

Around 23.15 the clouds part to reveal Jupiter and Venus in the western sky over Crosby beach.

In Camera...Dancing Sunlight and Starfish

A recent visit to Crosby beach on a clear, sparkling sunlit afternoon when even the stranded starfish seemed to be dancing.