ANOTHER WALK ON BAMBURGH BEACH

JULY 18, 2025

                                      BAMBURGH BEACH - DECEMBER 21, 2008 / JULY 16, 2025

This week I will take another spin on my time machine, otherwise known as as my photo archive. Assuming that I have not lost yet another set of images to a hard drive disaster, my photo archive allows me to retrace my steps and revisit a photo session from the past. I can then take another look at a photo that I captured a long time ago, and see if I can make something new. This new interpretation can be based on my changing mood, a new set of post processing tools, or both. My new interpretation might not be an improvement, but at least it will be different - and might reveal a new way of seeing a scene that I might never actually experience again.

                THE ORIGINAL WIDE ANGLE SNAPSHOT LOOKING ACROSS THE SEA TO THE SOUTH.

This walk on the beach took place on December 21, 2008 when Fran and Benjamin and I were all a lot younger. We spent three wonderful very short days in a place called Bamburgh on the Northumberland coast in Northernmost England. Bamburgh is a tiny coastal village that was cited as one of the best beaches in England in a guidebook that I had consulted in Powells. We arrived in late December in the midst of a worldwide economic collapse that coincided with our month-long holiday in England and Scotland. Bamburgh is an English version of Cannon Beach, with four hundred souls on another edge of the world. The North Sea is if anything even less hospitable than the Oregon Coast, especially in December. Instead of Haystack Rock holding court, we found one of the most complete castles in England in almost the same position on the beach. Bamburgh Castle is one of a string of castles on this coast (think sentinels like the Lord of the Rings) that guarded Northern England from the Scots or the Vikings depending on the century that you lived as a peasant, or perhaps the Duke,  in this part of the kingdom.

                                      CROP TO A SQUARE - THE CASTLE JUST GOT CLOSER.

We had a wonderful time in Bamburgh. We had the entire B&B to ourselves, and a choice of two pubs to visit within our walk to the beach. December in Northern England requires a certain amount of get-up-and-go even if there is not much to do, since sunset starts about 3:00 P.M.

It was cold on the beach that day, but at least the wind was calm and it was not raining. I now realize that this is one other most picturesque spots in England, since I inevitably find myself on this beach again in almost every photo book or You Tube video that comes across my feed. I know of at least half a dozen “famous” landscape photographers who live so close to this village that I could have met them in the pub. Of course their images are a little more picturesque than mine, since I spent a few days on the beach and they spend their lives nearby.

                                      CUE BLACK AND WHITE.

This particular image looks down the coast at the next castle in the fortified ring, Dunstanburgh Castle which lies across the bay a few miles to the South. The original snapshot takes in most of the coastal expanse. My attention was attracted to the castle silhouette and the moody sea and sky. 

I instantly decided to crop the image to emphasize the castle, which got larger in the smaller crop - although there is still plenty of negative space in this image. Although the image was already monochromatic, I decided that black and white would be moodier than the blue reality of the scene. 

                                      SUBTLY BRING UP THE EXPOSURE TO ALLOW FOR SEPARATE EXPOSURE MODIFICATIONS TO THE FOREGROUND AND THE SKY. BRING DOWN THE BLACKS TO PURIFY THE SILHOUETTE.

The rest of my work was devoted to highlight the contrast and textures inherent to a black and white conversion. I lowered the blacks to purify the castle silhouette while I subtly raised the overall exposure. This allowed me to work on smaller portions of the image. I used Lightroom’s new Texture tool to bring out the texture of the sea, while a judicious use of the new Dehaze slider increased the mood of just the sky. I finally used an adjustment of the highlights in the sky to bring out some more contrast in the “God Rays” that emerged from the dark clouds.

                                       THE TEXTURE SLIDER BRINGS OUT THE CHOPPY SEAS WHILE THE DEHAZE FILTER FURTHER DARKENS THE SKY.

                                      THE FINAL IMAGE ON THIS DAY.

So after an interval of almost twenty years I think I’ve achieved an image closer to how I felt that day on the beach. It hopefully conveys the mood of a coastline on the other side of the world. One of the wonders of this new age of photography is our ability to revisit images from long ago and far away. I encourage you to take the trip.