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Conwy Morfa Beach #2

The beach at Conwy Morfa on the North Wales coast at low tide showing contours and patterns in the sand and with the Great Orme headland in the background

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The story behind this image

The North Wales coast enjoys a huge tidal range of over 8 metres at its most extreme.

The tides, sweeping in and out twice a day, expose vast expanses of clean, washed sand, shaped and contoured by the rushing waters into an ever changing temporary landscape, only visible at low tide.

Due to its location at the head of the river Conwy estuary, the beach at Conwy Morfa is subject to some quite specatacular and beautiful contouring caused by the competing currents of river and tide.

My wife Liz and I were enjoying a stroll along this beach in the late afternoon sun as the tide had just turned, and we were entranced by the sand ripples, hillocks and pools which were lit in a very flattering and revealing way by the low angled sunlight and slowly being filled by the incoming tide.

That low angled sun was also striking the limestone headland of Llandudno's Great Orme, over on the other side of the estuary, and the combination of such interesting and lovely foreground features together with the Great orme in the background was just too much for me.

So our stroll turned into a photo session (as they so often do!), with me fussing and faffing over getting just the right composition while my tripod sank in the soft sand and Liz waiting patiently for me to get a move on.

Fortunately for Liz, after about half an hour of this the sun had sunk nearly to the horizon and the light had passed its best.

Also the tide was now coming in strongly, covering over my foreground, so I relucantly packed up and we resumed our stroll.

But I'm really glad we were in the right place at the right time so see such a lovely scene.

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Image data

Filename - conwy morfa beach 02.jpg

Camera - Canon 6D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm

Exposure - 1/3 sec @ f16, ISO100

Location - Conwy Morfa, North Wales

This image - 640x800px JPEG

Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CC

Comments - Polarising filter used to enhance colours