I nipped down to the Dorset coast to see what’s what at Lyme Regis. The light was superb, the movement of the water was brilliant for what I wanted, the clouds were all lining up ready for the final bit of colour in the day…but the wind was unbelievably strong. The camera almost toppled over on the tripod a few times, between me frantically trying to wipe off the salt water from my filters – which incidentally I failed spectacularly at, succeeding in only smearing the salty residue round the filter to make a misty view – and trying to sort out a cable release that, well, kept releasing itself from the connection port… very helpful.

I tried a few into the sun, as it really was something spectacular but that was also where the spray was coming from so despite my best efforts, waiting for the right moment and so on, there was just too much spray. It was just in the air all around me, everything got a fine coating of salt. It reminded me of the sort of salt covering you might find on a cross-channel ferry where the decks glisten and the handrails seem sticky with the stuff, it builds up and seems never to dry. You couldn’t see it, or feel it (unless a big wave hit = soaking!) but my filter was steadily getting spattered by salty droplets and I noticed a fine build-up accumulating around the joins of my tripod. I gave up on the filter, I turned my back to the spray and sun and what you see is above ‘vanilla’, just the processed raw, smidge of burning in places but no filters. Included below show everything I didn’t bin. So, not an entire disaster but not the sort of conditions I was expecting!