I went to Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire to photograph with my friends Helen and Paul Arthur at the end of November, and have been meaning to blog about it ever since. But finally I’ve managed to find a bit of time to do it.
The alarm clock woke me up just over an hour before sunrise. Fortunately, it was a very respectable 6:45am. The room was still dark and I couldn’t see any indication of the rising sun through the crack I had left between the curtains. But I convinced myself out of bed and pulled them back. It was very foggy outside. Damn. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was there with a couple of other photographer friends, and we had all planned to meet at 7am, then I probably would have just gone back to bed. But I wasn’t sure what my friends had decided and I didn’t want to be the one who seemed like a fair-weather photographer, so I got dressed and knocked on their door.
It was very miserable outside and difficult to believe that we’d make a single image in the fog as we walked down the steep road in Robin Hood’s Bay down to the beach. We knew that the tide would be on its way out, leaving a pristine beach in its wake, but when we arrived at the water’s edge, it was higher than we had thought it would be. We could still get onto the sand, but there were only a few metres between the breakwall and the waves.
My friends immediately got their cameras out, but I was having difficulty getting inspired. There were no vistas to be seen and there was not much grabbing my attention in the foreground amongst the few rocks and small tidal pools. Everything was a dull and dreary grey due to the fog. The tide was moving out at quite a pace and as more was becoming revealed to us on the shoreline, slowly I was finding patterns and rocks that were interesting enough for me to start clicking the shutter.
When all of a sudden I turned around and saw that the fog was beginning to lift in the distance, exposing the tops of the cliffs across the bay. Things started moving really quickly now as the fog swirled around and changed every second. Quite often with landscape photography, you can work at a snail’s pace. Nothing much is changing and you can really spend your time thinking, focusing and waiting to get the image right. But then suddenly something happens and you have to crank up 10 gears and switch into autopilot as you see opportunities unfolding and disappearing in front of you within seconds and you don’t have the luxury of contemplation. Today was one of those mornings of the two extremes. Perhaps surprisingly, both are satisfying, although I wouldn’t want to be working at 100mph all the time, not least because it’s during the slow considered photography that you can really learn and put your thoughts into practice. But you can sometimes surprise yourself at what you manage to record on film during that manic phase simply because you didn’t have the time to fully take it in and register it at the time.
The scene in front of us changed so much during that last hour or so. The sun rose above the horizon, turning everything a rich purple, the fog slowly evaporated away, leaving a clear and beautiful day, completely different to that which we woke up to. And to think how close I was to just rolling over and going back to sleep. I will remember this morning each time I struggle to convince myself out of bed.
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