Gower coastal photography

The forecast for yesterday was for heavy rain in the morning possibly clearing in the afternoon. Potentially the best forecast a landscape photographer could have! The rain clears the atmosphere of dust letting the winter light penetrate to illuminate the colours in the landscape. I needed to shoot a new cover image for my walking guide to Gower which will be out as a new edition in October. A quick check of the tide times and I was in luck as the low tide was early afternoon and it was a spring meaning a the really low tide would expose more of the beaches.

I impatiently waited for the sky to look a bit more promising from my house window in the Gwendraeth Fach valley and decided at 2pm to give it a go. I headed straight for the car park at Penmaen and from there it is a short walk to one of the best landscape views in the UK of Three Cliffs Bay. The sky had an excellent cloud structure with a "cloud train" running in thr direction with my focal point of the Three Cliffs.

I knew these clouds were not going to last and a couple of hours later, the sky was an uninterrupted blue spelling the end to any landscape photos. The beach was popular that afernoon as many had taken the opportunity to go out for a walk and it was surprisingly busy with horse-riders. All these elements added scale and interest to the scene.

I then walked to the headland to the east of the bay to capture a different angle as the tide turned and rapidly advanced up the beach. The plus side of having a 36MP sensor is that you can readily crop into an image in a number of ways including creating a panoramic image. I can remember the days when only a rich few could afford a 16 x 9 Fuji film camera!