After the rain at Cullercoats

Believe it or not, I took this panorama while dialled in to a work meeting on Teams.

Throughout this last year of lockdowns, I’ve been fortunate in a number of ways: first that my family and I are all still healthy; second that I still have a secure job and third, among others, that my employer has been incredibly accommodating of my childcare needs and so I have spent a large chunk of the past year looking after my kids in the mornings and shifting my work hours later into the day.

On this particular morning, I needed to listen in to a work update and was able to drop the kids at my mum’s for an hour (we’re in a support bubble) while I took a walk to listen to the call on headphones. Given the rare chance to walk around Cullercoats Bay on my own, I grabbed my GFX 50R as well and ended up having a doubly-productive hour: I got the work information I needed and a bunch of promising images while ambling around the rocks beyond the harbour wall.

The light was that rich, contrasty light you get after a rainstorm, with patchy breaks in the cloud allowing the harsh sunlight through. The tide was out, which allowed me to get out on the rocks to explore from the other side of the harbour wall.

I’ve been shooting my cameras mostly in Acros film simulation mode recently, a trick that can help focus on the light in a scene without the distraction of colour. That really helped on this day, as the harsh post-storm light suits black and white so well.

I have a bunch of other images with a lot of mood and contrast to work through from this short little wander, but this pano was a quick one to put together that worked well enough, so I thought I’d share in the interests of getting something written on this blog again.