Early in the morning of the summer solstice 2022 and I'm all alone in the peace and quiet on the huge expanse of sand that is Talacre Beach on the North Wales coast.
It's now just after 3am and already the sky to the northeast is glowing with the warm colours of the coming dawn, reflecting in the glass like waters of the Irish Sea as its wavelets lap at my my feet on the incoming tide.
Already surrounded by water, the silhouette of the iconic Point of Ayr lighthouse points skywards to herald the approaching sunrise, still an hour and a half away, while I plant my tripod firmly in the wet sand to shoot this video of the idyllic scene.
I'd actually been on Talacre beach since midnight, hoping to create a time lapse video of noctilucent clouds over the lighthouse which, I'm happy to report, I suceeded at, and you can view my resulting Talacre Noctilucent Timelapse #1 video by clicking on the link.
But as the sky grew lighter and those ethereal noctilucents faded away like a dream I repositioned myself and my camera equipment to shoot yet another few hundred still images to create a time lapse video of the tide coming in and surrounding the lighthouse, and again you can watch my Talacre Tide Timelapse #5 video by clicking the link.
And it was after shooting the incoming tide time lapse that I took a few minutes to record this real time video of the scene before moving up the beach to shoot my final time lapse video of the morning, Talacre Sunrise Timelapse #3, featuring the sun rising behind the lighthouse.
All in all, quite a morning!
Filename - talacre dawn video 01
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - Aperture and ISO selected to provide a 1/60 sec shutter speed
Filters - 3 stop neutral density graduated filter used to reduce the brightness of the sky relative to the foreground.
Music - Kiss the Sky - Aakash Gandhi
Location - Talacre Beach, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (1080p HD format also available)
Clip duration - 57 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2023 unless otherwise stated.