Hands up if you ever get to your location (in this case, the beach) and the clouds have come in and completely stuffed up your plans for an amazing shoot at Golden Hour?

Yep! Me too! It happened to me on Tuesday night in fact. I was super prepared. Bag packed ready to go an hour in advance. Checked the Rizon app for what time would be the best light-wise and headed for the beach.

I got there and was gutted to find the clouds raining on my parade, so to speak!

Rather than stand there at the shoreline stamping my feet in disgust at the clouds, I simply looked down. The tide was on its way out and was gently coating the sand in a glossy-film of water, as well as small bounties of varying seaweeds along the beach.

I switched into scavenger mode and sought out my new subject for the evening; seaweed!

The shapes of the discarded sea plants dotted the sands, some constantly refreshed by the gentle sea foam of the ebbing waves. Something I more than often ignore began to fascinate me in their exotic shapes and forms they created on the shore.

I danced up and down the shoreline in dogged pursuit of forms of seaweed deposits more eccentric than the last.
I felt like a scavenger, just like those seagulls I had encountered last week. Of course, their presence is never too far away. In between the clumps of seaweed, their footsteps marked the beautifully freshly wind and sea-swept sands.

The point is, sometimes despite our best intentions, nature has other plans for our location shoots. And it’s really easy to just say “It’s ok, I’ll come back tomorrow night.” And I could have easily done that on Tuesday. Instead of my intended landscape photo shoot, it became more of an up-close portraiture shoot of the beach. Focusing in on the smaller unforgotten aspects of the beach gives the viewer a more intimate feel of your experience of that location.  It gives people an idea of the essence of the location, and all the different textures and colours that sometimes get lost in wide angle landscape shots.

It’s something I think I will do more often because I really saw my local beach in a new light. All these little vignettes along the beach allowed me to see the life that exists on the beach, how it changes, shapes and reforms itself. I can’t wait to keep documenting it!