I love this stunning beach scene taken in Rockliffe. The sunlight dancing off the distant water. The sparkling pools on the beach. The highlights top the seaweed-covered rocks. All these elements turn a fairly ordinary landscape into the spectacular.

Where is Rockcliffe Beach?

Rockcliffe Beach is on the Solway Coast at the Urr estuary in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. There is a small pebbly beach when the tide is in. When the tide is out, it goes a long way. You can then walk across the beach to Rough Island about 500m away (just visible in the centre distance). But this is not the best place to access Rough Island. That would be from Kippford a little further up the estuary. (Please note that access to Rough Island is not allowed during May and June to avoid disturbing nesting birds).

As my image shows, the beach has many rocks mostly covered in seaweed. When the tide is out, with care, you can scramble across the rocks and inspect the many rock pools. It is possible to walk a long way across the revealed beach, but it remains very wet and there are many undulations filled with water. Finding a completely dry section to walk on is difficult. In places, the sand will also start to sink if you remain still. I have not heard of anyone being sucked down into the sand, yet!

The Drama of the Light

Rockcliffe faces South-West, which means that during the winter months the sun tends to be low in the sky and just about always in front as you look out to sea.

I took this image in the early afternoon of October. At this time the sun is just high enough to keep it out of the image whilst taking full advantage of bright reflections. It does mean that in my view all of the rocks and distant land are in deep shadow. In the post-processing, I have brought out some of the shadow detail, but it is the drama of the light that is important. The brightest highlights are close to, but not quite, burnt out. It does mean there is no detail in those brightest areas, but this was consistent with the very bright scene before me.

The Image Processing

There is little colour in the original image, a lot of black and brown in the foreground, a little greenery visible in the distance and a very bright pale-looking blue sky. I decided that creating a monochrome image would be the best way to demonstrate the atmosphere present at the time. To give the image a bit of a lift I added a slight duotone.

The tone curve is shown in the image below. The RGB is highlighted showing a slight S curve applied to provide contrast. Behind the white curve, you can see the blue channel which also has a slight S curve. Pulling the shadow areas of the blue channel down introduces yellow into these shadows as they have the blue removed. Pulling the highlights up increases the blue in those areas.

• Camera – Olympus E-M5 Mk11
• Lens – 12-40mm Zukio Pro lens at 40mm
• Exposure – ISO 800, f5.6, 1/6400s
• Processed with Photolab 5.

You can see examples of using the Red channel and Green Channel on the tone curve to create Duotones.