I was down at Brighton seafront the other day, walking the dog and checking out what there was to be checked out.

When you live by the sea, it is sometimes nice to visit it of an evening you see.

As seems to be an inevitable inevitability, there was a really lovely sunset.  Not sure if there is always a nice sunset on Brighton beach, or if there is always a nice sunset on any beach.  Or perhaps I am just lucky and always see a nice sunset when I visit.  Or, bare with me here, perhaps there is something about my magnetic field or sunny aura that creates a nice sunset!!!

What they came for (2010)

Anyway, as mentioned in a previous post, I have had my fill of taking photos of it.  Done and done – can’t be bothered no more.

WATCHING OTHER PEOPLE TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS IS SOMETIMES MORE SATISFYING THAN TAKING THE IMAGE YOURSELF

BUT…what I have always been interested in, is watching other people taking photographs of the sunset.  Brighton is particularly fruity for this hobby as an army of semi-professionals seem to descend every evening and carefully compose their scene which comprises of:

A) The Sunset – preferably reflected in the sea
B) The dilapidated West Pier glistening in the evening light
C) Some seagulls either flying or standing in the shores of the water
D) Maybe a person silhouette
E) The high rise buildings of shoreham forming a backdrop

Get all five and your on to a winner.

So, my new favourite thing to photograph on Brighton beach is not the lovely sunset – but the lovely people taking a photograph of the lovely sunset.

You have to take it seriously

And it can get quite crowded

See – sometimes people are more interesting than places!!!

Well, well, well. Here we are – putting photos of a sunset up. Does life get any more predictable than this?

At first, all I could do was take out of focus images of people!

Many a year ago – I swore never to take another photo of a Brighton sunset. When I first moved down here and was a regular beach front sunset frequenter, I would take endless rolls of film of the sunset. Occasionally they came out looking A-OK, but generally, they just looked like every other sunset photo in the world. More over, they were quite dull – once you have seen one image of a Brighton sunset…etc…etc…etc

Anyway, to this pledge I stayed true and strong. partly, this was because I started going to the seafront less, partly because I had genuinely bored myself of taking the same photo of the sunset over the crusty pier!

WHAT BROKE THE SILENCE

To be fair, there were a lot of interesting people on the beach that day...

So a few weeks back, Hannah and I took a stroll with the dog to the beach. It was a nice day – first in a long while and the air smelt of spring. Armed with a couple of hip flasks of smooth and warming whisky mac we set off and established ourselves on the beach as the sun was beginning to think about going down.

Because it had been so long since my last sunset seaside visit – I forgot how amazing the colours could be. Before I knew it…there I was, camera in hand…finger poised over the shutter…my mind saying NO but my heart saying YES. So – I decided to fuck with my rules and take some photos anyway! Glad I did really, it kinda re-sparked my love for Brighton beach when the sun is setting and the winter skies make the colours go insane.

Long live sunsets – I sincerely hope when I retire that I dedicate my final years to watching it go down every evening.

The colours were too good...the urge hard to resist!

The white backdrop of the seafront buildings glow as the sun sets

Fine - there it is, there's your bloody sunset.

In my defence…check out the crazy tuft of cloud on the left of this image. Watched that piece of cloud form and then fade for ages.