Autumn is a capricious season, with shortening days cloaked in gold, rust and greytone. Some days dance lightly, soft and still, cloaked in a gentle warm haze, lulling us that summer's still close by. Others lurk darkly, oppressive and leaden, lumbering irrecovably on towards winter.
Blog
I blog about nature in the Norfolk countryside and about my wildlife garden.
Hunstanton Sundog
Parhelion at Sunset - Hunstanton, Norfolk
On my last landscape trip I witnessed a truly beautiful natural phenomenon. As I arrived at Hunstanton beach and gazed at the sunset it appeared as if there were not one but two setting suns in the sky, both positioned low on the horizon, the second with a hint of a rainbow-hued glimmer in an arc shape. This optical atmospheric effect is called a parhelion, or sun dog and is one of many types of ice halos caused by the refraction and reflection of sunlight through small ice crystals high up in the atmosphere. I discovered that the atmospheric conditions had also created the faint sun pillar in the photograph, which is not caused by a vertical ray of light at all, but by the glinting of many tiny hexagonal-shaped plate ice crystals, the same shape of ice crystals that create sundogs.
Many thanks to atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley for his assistance in identifying the specific type of atmospheric optical effects I observed and photographed in this image and to the clear scientific explanations provided by his website of the many unusual atmospheric phenomenon that can be observed by day and night. Click here to see a scientific diagram explaining the optical effects in my image
Summer Sea Lavender Sunset
Late July into August, the oft-times bleak and blustery North Norfolk Coast becomes cloaked with a carpet of lilac sea lavender flowers and paints a vivid picture of tranquil beauty at sunset...
Stiffkey Saltmarsh at high tide
Storm Clouds
We seem to be having April's weather in May this year all of a sudden, which has given me some amazing big sky scenes from my own doorstep. Here's a very simple composition, a "skyscape" image of nothing but clouds brewing into a full on storm that I took on the verge across my road in quite magical evening light.
Twilight at Hunstanton
Hunstanton lighthouse
Sea Squall At Stiffkey
I've been out of action for a bit , so it was a real pleasure to take a short trip out to the coast yesterday evening for a gentle landscape shoot in some interesting weather conditions. This shot is of a sea squall passing across the saltmarsh at Stiffkey.
Autumnal Change
As the seasons are finally turning things are changing in my life too. I am finally taking my first steps into photography tutoring and its a wonderful reminder of the creativity that taking up photography as a hobby can unlock in people. It put me in mind of the period when I was still very much on the steep part of my learning curve and was starting to experiment with my camera. This was a shot taken in Scotland trying to evoke the essence of autumn.