Gold Beach stretches along the Normandy coastline, famously harbouring Port Winston in the Second World War. And also of course being a British Landing Beach for D-Day. I love these beaches not just because of their incredible history, but also of their eerie stillness, flatness and their failure to not shine golden in the sun, all year round. A great subject for my Gold Beach Landscape Photography. Find more Normandy posts here.
In this series of photos, I was focusing on using a 16:9 ratio instead of the traditional shot crop. This is to emphasise the colour bands of sun, sand, sea, hills and town. Fortune seems to shine upon me like the sun when I visit this particular beach giving me beautiful light for my landscapes. The beach has remains of the mulberry temporary harbour giving a brutalist shipwreck to the traditionally French coastline. Scattering the sea and the beaches with the memory of the conflict 70 years ago.
Gold Beach Landscape Photography
As with all landscape photography, I usually pump up my aperture to a minimum of f/8.0 and try and keep my ISO shut down to 100. The shutter I set to 1/250 or higher. The above shot is set at f/9.0, ISO 100 and a shutter of 1/400.
16:9
With using the 16×9 ratio, it gives a cinema effect of the film or that of a postcard you may receive from an aunt or uncle on their travels. As I personally read a photo from left to right it also gives the effect that the photo is bigger than it is and in essence, more intense.
I can’t wait to see what this area has to offer in the oncoming wintery months and if I’ll get the luck of seeing snow on the beach.
