Early Mornings at Cleethorpes.

Over Easter Weekend I took on the challenge of recreating this image which I took on 28th April 2014.  I needed it for someone who wanted to purchase it to hang as a very large (A0?) size on a correspondingly large wall.  I order to be able to deliver this I needed the original raw file which I had lost when a hard drive crashed.  Naively I offered to recreate the shot.  I knew the tide, tide time, dates when it was possible, lens and focal length, ISO and shutter speed.  It must be easy, surely.

I wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to exactly recreate an image, though. There are so many factors that just have to come together: tide time and height, weather, time of sunrise and that always imponderable, people getting in the way with cars and boat trailers.
On Good Friday at 5.15 am, after fighting my way through the crowds emerging from pubs and clubs who though that I was a taxi, a lot came together.  But, by the time it was light enough to photograph the tide was too high and jetty rapidly submerging.  The light was not too bad, but it was too choppy.

On Saturday it was thick fog and the tide was wrong as well. I know the focal length is different but I finished by playing around.

On Sunday, when I arrived some people were busy launching a boat with a car and trailer but the real problem was that the tide was way out as can be seen from the colour images I took from Brighton Slip area. Realising that everything was wrong I decided to try some colour shots anyway.

While I was taking these shots the tide was coming rapidly but the sun was rising too.

When I had packed up I thought I would go  back to the pier and have a look at the jetty. The tide was coming right but the sky was clear and, sadly, the sun had already risen, as can bee seen.

All in all a bit of a tale of woe, but I  really enjoyed myself doing it. The next time the tides are suitable is the beginning of May, by which time the sunrise will be way too early. Of course, it might be a cloudy day which would work so I could try again, but only if it’s cloudy.