According to a tourist guide I read in my cottage, the best beach in the area was Woolacombe sands and only a few miles away.  I was heading to Woolacombe my second day in north Devon and the weather was getting worse.

Woolacombe Sands

I decided I would walk from Woolacombe beach to Morte Point along the south west coastal path.  Along the beach and the waves from the Bristol channel came crashing in, and some winter surfers were making the most of it.

Handholding Telephoto

Finally I got my DLSR out and was hand-holding at my lens sweet spot of F/8.  I still had yet to set up on my tripod.  Using a tripod you maybe tend to take your time and select a better composition.  Hand holding you shoot a lot more and a lot more free-form.  To be honest, my tripod is becoming hard work and am considering a new better one.

With telephoto as in the surfer above at 85mm, ideally your shutter speed should equal this or be greater to avoid motion blur.  With image stabilisation switched on, this gives you a few more stops to play around with.

Even on a wet windy winters day I always enjoy a walk along the coast.  Its exhilarating and a privilege to have such a beautiful beach almost to myself.  I guess it looks a lot different in the summer and during the holiday season.

Handholding Polariser

With water and wet rocks its best to use a polariser to reduce any reflections.  Hand holding I was not using one as it was dark and a polariser reduces the light by up to another two stops.  Again, I should have taken my time and used a tripod to get better quality landscape photos.  But I was heading in that direction and getting back into the groove.  It’s also good to practice and improve your hand holding technique.  Some landscape photographers hate using a tripod and depend on image stabilisation and bumping up their ISO.

Barricane Beach

From Woolacombe I made my way around to Barricane Beach where there was lots of rock formations and endless compositions to shoot which was good practice.

Looking at the image above a long exposure would have been better with the fast-moving crashing waves and the clouds in the sky.   Also the composition has some distracting elements in the bottom of the frame.  At this point I decided to bump up my ISO one stop to 200 to get a faster shutter speed on such a dark day.

With not including anything of interest in the immediate foreground  I was focusing on infinity and the images were coming out sharp from front to back.

There was plenty to shoot on the beaches here in north Devon, I was in my element.  But then grey and moody turned into wet and miserable so I made my way to a pub in Mortehoe not too far behind before continuing my journey to Morte Point.

On the rare occasion there was a break in the thick clouds and the sun would shine through lighting up the cliffs.  You had to be quick to catch it.  In such conditions rain and shine you can often get rainbows forming, but not see any today.

I made it to the foot of Morte Point before turning around and heading back to Woolacombe.  The thick clouds and rain were heading back in and here to stay.

In wet rainy conditions, you have to keep checking your lens and wiping off any water droplets with a micro-fibre towel.  Else the picture will be ruined or you will have a lot of post processing work to do with the clone tool.

Back past Barricane beach and low tide. Including the people in the shot adds scale to the image.

Back on Woolacombe beach and behind those thick black clouds the sun was now setting and the day and my walk was coming to an end.  Hand-holding I took over 250 photographs that day which means lots of post processing and filtering out a small selection of the best landscape photos around Woolacombe.