Lyme Regis – Coastal Eden

I’m very lucky that my mother-in-law has been friends for ever with a lovely chap who owns a cottage on Church Cliff in Lyme Regis. He lets family stay there, and it’s always fully occupied, but I was able to secure a few days there for a long weekend last week.

The first morning after arriving I got up early to get down to the Cobb to get the obligatory sunrise image. Sunrise was at 0702 and I got there at 0620 after taking a couple of pre-dawn pictures on the walk there.

I arrived at the same time as another photographer couple and we set up on the cobb. Thick clouds also joined us, so we knew to expect a poor shoot.

Closer to 7am, the clouds began to part everso slightly, exactly at the same time as a well-dressed couple decided to walk in front of us with a cheery “morning, we’re going to ruin your shots I’m afraid!”, which was nice. They proceeded to the end of the Cobb, front and centre of the lead-in to the images we had framed.

Undeterred, and with the lady next to me asking me if I was going to push them in, or she was, we started taking what pictures we could.

Happily, the sun was a glowing deep red and shone through the parting in the clouds just enough to produce a few quite dramatic shots. I hammered the shutter with slow speeds, faster speeds, keeping the ISO level down knowing I could tweak if I needed. I’d prepared in advance (having no internet, phone or signal at the cottage) by installing the Lightroom Classic on my tablet.

Anyway, looking online I saw that the lady next to me got off an almost identical shot to me, which was reassuring! 

Over the next few days, mist, cloud and rain put up camp and put a downer on proceedings, but I did get a few good shots in. The fireworks on Saturday evening went off and I was able to grab a couple of shots from the cottage. And to finish off the visit, a Lynx helicopter flew over, followed by a fighter jet. I was unprepared for both, having an 18-135mm lens on, but there you go.