As it gets closer and closer to the “shortest day” of the year, it seems only right to post a more uplifting photograph. This image was captured on the south east coast of Sardinia, Italy just outside a small town called Pula. Personally, I much prefer capturing sunrises. It is more effort to getting up early and to make sure you are there at the right time, also you have to get lucky (sometimes you get up and there is too much cloud or mist). But, when you do experience a sunrise like this, it makes all that effort worth it.

On this particular instance, I remember the sun hitting my face, looking around and realising everything was getting lighter and brighter and more importantly, warmer. The thing about sunsets is, as much as they are easier to photograph, the sun is disappearing, it is turning into night. In contrast, when you are around for sunrise, you have the rest of the day ahead of you – this can be very inspirational. On the day I took this photograph for example, I had one of the most amazing days of photography this year, taking hundreds of photographs of at least four or five different locations on the island, all in one day. That is the power of a sunrise for me as a photographer.

Before the start of this year I don’t ever remember witnessing a sun rise, certainly never photographing one. This summer I captured my first two, this was the last one and best so far. Sitting there in the cold of night in my pjamas on the beach, wondering which direction the sun will appear from and thinking to myself “hotel bed was warm, sun lounger at night, not so much!” You could feel the heat from the sun within a couple of minutes of seeing the first glimpse of red glow. It was a wonderfully warm feeling, and within five or ten minutes of first seeing the sun pierce the horizon it was at the start where you can see it now. Could it get anymore perfect? Yes, a yacht kindly sailed along the horizon.

It’s not all a perfect fairy tale however, I hadn’t looked at this image closely until post-processing it this evening to share with you…it’s blurred! I will kick myself regularly until I’m next on a beach in the Med at sunrise because I didn’t use a tripod! Using a monopod would be fine, and is great for wide angle sunrises for the most part but in the above photo I had zoomed in to 135mm and so camera shake and low light levels became a really big issue. Hopefully you can hardly tell on the above preview, but this means that this photograph will never get printed due to the blur and my stupidity.

The more effort I put into this website and my photography, the more visitors and emails I get from people. If it wasn’t for the numbers of people reading this and looking at my images every day this picture wouldn’t be taken. I had had a very late night the night before and managed to crawl out of bed at 6am to sit by the beach in the cold waiting for the sun to come up over the sea. It was unbelievably brilliant. Until now I always thought to myself, “sunrises are the same as sunsets, only you have to get out of bed really early to capture them”. I now see there is so much more, the warmth from the sun, the colour shift as it pops over the horizon. The above image was taken at the local beach in Pula, Sardinia. I would guess at about half an hour after I first glimpsed the sun popping out of the sea. I obviously took many photos but this one is a little different because of the way I used the palm trees to the left to encroach on the photograph, giving a nice black silhouette against the orange light.

My dad had told me that some of his best sunset photographs, had been taken in Northumberland. So when I spent a week there a couple of months ago, I was determined to take a sunset. After photographing a lot of sunsets, I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t so much the quality of the clouds, sun and colours of light that makes for a great image of a sunset. It is more to do with having a good or interesting subject to put in front or behind the sun as it sets as in the example image above. I used this old yacht called Morning Mist, and put the front of the boat in front of the setting sun. I am really happy to share this picture with you as it is one of the better sunset photographs I have taken. But in my opinion I have a better one which I took of the same boat on the same evening. But sadly you will have to keep reading and sometime soon I will publish it.

This afternoon I arrived back to Manchester from Almeria on the south coast of Spain. Finally, I can put some of my Spanish photography online for you, but it was so hot I hardly took any photographs. The above picture was taken on the compact camera, I was trying to scout out a location around Roquetas De Mar looking toward San Agustin. I was planning to come back on the last night to get a really good photograph. This was just a quick grab shot, still I didn’t think it was too bad and as I never got a chance to go back to get a really good sunset I thought I would share this with you. On a more positive note, I did take a picture of this morning’s sunrise, something I rarely ever see. More photos from Spain will be uploaded in the next few days.

After our Saturday morning exploring the centre of Blackpool we drove a couple of miles north along to coast to a quieter part of the beach for a picnic and a spot of sun bathing. It was a great afternoon and we decided to wait around for the sunset. There was a lot of haar (sea mist) over the sea, making the sunset a little diluted. At about 8pm two fisherman started setting up their rods over the sea wall so I thought it would add interest to an otherwise boring sunset.