This wasn't quite the shot that I was going for. This weekend is forecast to be clear and sunny, but not warm. We have an Antarctic weather cell sitting over the top of us generating icy, howling winds and low temperatures.
I drove to Austinmer beach with a view to running up the nearby headland and shooting a coastline with powerful breaking waves. What do I get instead? A rippling millpond with occasional rolling waves.
Plan B was to shoot the foam across the top of the few breaking waves, which was being torn apart by the wind and creating a mist over the wave crest. "You should get out the ND filter", I told myself. Did I listen? No. Instead I stopped down, dropped the ISO to 200 and opened the exposure a stop to get a long exposure time that way. Did it work? Yes, kinda. I had some shots that I was moderately happy with, but nothing to write home about or publish in my PESO gallery.
In the end I decided on this one; an offshore freighter behind one of the rare powerful breaks on the rocks at the northern end of the beach, both lit by the just-risen sun.
This is still one of the stopped-down ones so there is a little bit of the "motion blur" thing that I was going for, but at 1/13th of a second not all that much.