I took this photo on an early morning walk to a small secluded beach near the village of Hörnum. It was pretty far away, so the first challenge was framing the small lighthouse. Luckily, the clouds lit by the early-morning sun provided an interesting context for me to include in the frame. The second challenge was the timing, as I wanted to show the ever-rotating lighthouse lamp at peak brightness. I needed three attempts to get it right.

So far, I have almost exclusively photographed beach grass as a silhouette, backlit by a bright sky. This is an obvious choice for a black-and-white image – and pretty low-hanging fruit to pick. This time, I tried a different approach. I found it very tricky to balance the dark foreground with the brighter background in a natural way so that it still reflects the sunrise mood wanted for this shot. 

To get the previous image right, I had to set up my tripod close to the waterline so that, while waiting for the long exposure to finish, I found this composition of the bubbly water moving to and fro right next to my feet. This image works because the sun was still relatively low, providing the side lighting the sand needed to reveal its beautifully subtle structure. The foam creating angular lines also helps with the composition. I took five exposures, and this is the one that works best. 

Sea Marks like this one often serve a similar purpose as lighthouses. They allow ships to determine their position and avoid shallow waters near the coastline. However, this particular one may have a completely different function as a lighthouse is nearby. Whatever its purpose, it gave me an opportunity for an almost minimalistically straightforward landscape photograph. However, it took some effort to make it work. I added some clarity, texture, and dehaze to the clouds, used a vignette for the sky (but not the foreground) to add some mood, added brightness and contrast to the sea mark and the upper portion of the grass, and finally darkened the bottom the image using a gradient mask. 

The light was dull and boring when I took this photograph. Many photographers (or should I say influencers?) on YouTube wouldn’t even have broken their camera out under these conditions, as they prefer to proclaim perfect lighting conditions as an indispensable precondition to make an interesting photograph. Sometimes, I guess they do it to appear more knowledgeable, lure more viewers to watch their videos, and generate more income. There’s nothing wrong with being able to assess how certain conditions affect a photograph. It is an essential skill to have. However, I find it an equally crucial skill to be able to make an appealing photograph regardless of the conditions.