A Groyne is "a low wall or sturdy timber barrier built out into the sea from a beach to check erosion and drifting."
I'd seen photographs of this one on the internet. So it's quite popular. I scouted it once before and found the tide too far out. With more clouds than sky and high tide falling in the middle of today I made the one hour drive to this fairly secluded beach.
Photographing a structure like this is much more difficult than it looks. Thank goodness we have digital cameras these days so each click is free. I took >150 today and I only really like a few. Finding the right focal length, position (from left to right) and height is tricky. The water seemed to be full of little scraps of seaweed leading to a messy shore line every time the water receded. That makes some of my favourite 'minimalist' shots messy. So I cropped the messy bits out of my favourite shots and then wished I'd known to zoom in more... not as many megapixels in the final image as I could have had... oh well... just have to get used to going back because perfection is elusive.
Fifteen seconds gets one a clean minimalist take. Tide was on its way in at about 2.5m
No clever post-processing here. The sun literally poked its face through a small gap in the clouds and shone at my feet and I grabbed the shot before the rest of the sea filled with light. Amazing moment.
Water lapping and pounding the Groyne. I liked the patterns. But you can see on the bottom left scraps of weed literally washed up with each incoming wave. The top of the shoreline is ankle deep in seaweed. Weird!
Swirls. Actually it is surprising these structures endure the ocean for any time at all!
A larger square-crop of my favourite 20s exposure.
