Managed to get up early enough for a dawn sunrise seascape shoot at the Coastguard cottages at Cuckmere Haven Seaford on the East Sussex coast. The first photo shoot of December.

Cuckmere Haven visits

I have visited Cuckmere Haven many times in the past but not to specifically photograph the coastguard cottages. More I was visiting other great locations nearby like Hope Gap or down on the coast at Cuckmere Haven itself.

Early for Sunrise

For a change actually arrived early at the Seaford Head carpark where you can walk down to the Coastguard cottages and Cuckmere Haven. It was still dark so had sometime to sort out my composition. The weather forecast was for a nice sunny December day later, bit chilly but some broken cloud in the morning.

There was some thick cloud above but a gap on the horizon for the sun to rise into. The cloud above was breaking up but moving to the east. That gap on the horizon was getting smaller. Should have completely gone just about sunrise at 7:40am.

Difficult Composition

There are potentially thousands of different compositions you can take up in a location like the coastguard cottages at Cuckmere Haven. But what to include and what to exclude overlap with many of them.

The Eastern Lights

Around sunrise the clouds really lit up! Looked something like the Aurora or the northern lights in their formation. I just had to shoot the spectacle with the composition I had.

As I was to learn later this composition is not the best for the location if you want to feature the coastguard cottages and the Seven Sisters. Another landscape photographer turned up late, iv bumped into him before at the Cuckmere valley sunset and the Woodingdean Sunflowers.

He knows the area well and advised me the best composition was further up the path using minimum of an 85mm lens to compress the shot and give more prominence to the seven sisters in the background. It clicked with me and was ready to try it out even though now it would not include the very colourful sunrise.

Cuckmere Haven Golden Hour

Changed lenses from the 24-70mm to the 70-200mm to get that compression. Walked up the path and think I found a much better composition.

Morning golden hour was in full swing when I found a better location. It certainly was a much better composition, removing much foreground clutter and empty space and bringing that cliff face of the seven sisters much closer and bigger in the frame. These Cuckmere Haven compositions are much more about what is in the midground and background.

With it being December the sun was rising further to the south east. A killer composition would be a telephoto wide angle or panoramic. That is the plan for the next visit. At least now I know where the best composition is for Cuckmere Haven, to really enhance the cliffs of the Seven sisters, to include the coastguard cottages and the colourful sunrise. You will learn a lot about composition trying to photograph all the elements to include at Cuckmere Haven,

Too nice a day

Golden hour over and the cloud had cleared to the east. Was going to be a very nice sunny December day, too nice for anymore seascape photography.

Took a wander down to the coast at Cuckmere haven, the tide was high, the seven sister cliffs looked majestic in the morning light. Time to pack up and head home.