I had checked the height of tides for my target area of coastline in the West of England some time ago as to make my plan work I needed a really high tide.

Monday 19th October was showing a high tide of 13m at 09:45. I had planned on getting images of 3 different locations within 10 miles of each other so getting my schedule right was very important.

I decided to leave home at 03:00 as it was a 2 hour drive to my first location at a town called Portishead which is near a city called Bristol in the English county of North Somerset. I had also planned on taking images at 3 different locations here in Portishead plus another set of images at an outdoor swimming pool in a town called Clevedon, 10 miles further South. I went straight to my first location in Portishead to scout it out as it wasn't particularly clear on any map where it was! I had seen images of it from 2 other landscape photographers which was the reason I wanted to make a visit.

Dawn was at 07:30 so when I parked up close to where I thought the location was it was pitch black! Luckily I had my torch and set off along the coastline to seek it out, and surprisingly I came across it quite quickly and was instantly dismayed by what I found! It looked totally uninspiring and the tide was so far out I thought I had miscalculated the potential of this location. Luckily, I had seen these other photographs so decided to persevere! This is the location in its raw state when I returned an hour later in the light...

I decided to leave straight away down the coast 10 miles to catch the tide at The Marine Lake in Clevedon. I have been to Clevedon before but never to the lake so my intent was to see what I could get down there. I arrived at 06:15 and the blue dawn light was just beginning to make an appearance and I took these images quite quickly as I really wanted to exclude any dawn light.

I stayed in Clevedon for only 40 mins before heading straight back to Portishead. On arrival I still found the tide was well out into the estuary and the composition I wanted to shoot still looked too industrial! I started to sort out my equipment and change lenses ready to get the shot. Where I was getting ready were some upright stones that had been laid up as a sculpture project which I decided to while away a bit of time whilst waiting for the tide to come in. I glanced over to the location only to find the tide had suddenly appeared from nowhere and I was likely to miss my shot!

I quickly had to scramble across some rocks on the bank to set up my camera. Within 5 mins the tide began to cover the structure and I was able to finally get the shot I wanted... only just!

I packed up quickly and drove across town to my next location, Battery Point. This used to be a site for wartime munitions and had this very unique beacon marker.

Finally I went to the Lido as I am undertaking a small project shooting Lidos and outdoor swimming pools throughout England. Lidos have great Art Deco style architecture which I find appealing. I will be producing an e-book from this Lido for free download in due course so please keep an eye open for it!