Newquay Seascapes - Coastal Photography Trip to Cornwall

At the beginning of September I had a great weeks holiday on the Cornish coastline staying at the popular town of Newquay. Our accommodation was on the Pentire headland between Fistral Beach and Crantock Beach so was a perfect base to explore the beaches in the area during the day and get out for a little photography during some of the evenings. During the week I managed to fit in a couple of photography trips around the beaches of Newquay and a little further down the coast at Holywell Bay. The weather was surprisingly good throughout the whole week with plenty of sunshine and not many clouds. Clear skies can be a little tricky for photography so I had to make sure the viewpoints included enough fore & mid ground details to make the featureless skies less imposing.

One of the first trips of the week was a quick stop at Holywell Bay after a round of golf further up the hill at the Holywell Bay Golf Club. The sunset on this evening was quick strong and the lack of cloud meant that the sun produced some beautiful low side lighting illuminating the sand dunes and Holywell Village beyond.

I spent a brilliant evening on Fistral Beach first shooting across the beach from the headland and then a little later on down on the sands amongst the surfers catching the last of days light. The sunset was very intense which gave a few issues with flare and again the featureless skies didn't help with the compositions. The south end of Fistral Beach has a good array of rocky inlets and channels in which to take photographs from, I ended up on top of some of the rocks with the tide incoming around me trying get a balanced composition.

The most successful evening of the trip was a return visit to Holywell Bay, the mid tide allowed me to get right out onto the beach and include the river waters running out to sea along with a pretty decent sunset. It was very hazy on this evening which didn't help a few of the earlier photos as you can see in the photo below the sun was visible as a large red circle all the way until it dropped below the horizon.

I made the choice to stay down on the beach to shoot in the blue post sunset lighting, around 20 minutes later the balance of the last of the light and darkness gave me great opportunities to shoot some longer exposures and really bring out the richness of the colours. To top it off a small bank of cloud positioned itself perfectly at the top of my frame to give some much needed detail in the sky and create a natural vignette which works so well in landscape photographs, it’s moments like this which make the wasted trips bearable!

We also made the trip up the coast to the Bedruthan Steps more for a walk along the coastal path than for photography. The evening light was very strong catching these incredible sea stacks, the tide was coming in fast so we didn't make it down to the beach. It seems that some of the cliff has recently been washed away so you are unable to get to the usual viewing area which I had used previously so had to make do with a viewpoint a little further inland.

Crantock beach is a firm favourite of mine, one of my most popular photographs was taken here way back in 2007 Crantock Dunes >> on this trip I only visited Crantock beach during the day and took a few photographs of the surfers along with the features left by the tide in the flat sands.

Being so close to the Gannel Estuary we spent lots of time watching to estuary fill up and drain out during the day, in the evenings the estuary becomes very calm and offers lots of opportunities depending on the level of the tide.

I try to make a trip to Cornwall every year, last year we headed a little further south to Lands End which you can read about here > You can also view all of my photographs from Cornwall in my Cornwall Gallery >>