A trip to Northumberland is incomplete without visiting Bamburgh.
It’s easy to see why Bamburgh’s popularity has exploded in the last decade. It’s historical and beautiful. There’s not many places in the UK where a huge castle stands tall and proud over a vast beautiful beach.
My favourite part of the area is Harkess Rocks, north of the castle. Harkess Rocks and Blackrock Point features a prehistoric fault line and a confusing jumbled mass of ancient volcanic rock. It’s a lot of fun to make compositions from it all. Above the beach, dunes covered in grass hide beautiful flowers in the summer.
Southeast of the castle, one can find poppys galore and golden yellow lupines, complete with the formidable stature of Bamburgh Castle.
It’s a photographer’s paradise.
All photos taken on my Sony α7ii using my Sony 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS lens. RAWs developed and edited in Capture One, finalised in Affinity Photo.
Above Bamburgh beach, a myriad of dunes covered in grass criss-cross in every direction. Happily, we found this little patch of Valeriana rubra (Red Valerian), which I formed a composition with.
On Harkness Rocks, and the tide coming in, I picked out various compositions and watched the waves crash against the rocks, picking the aesthetically pleasing moments. In the distance, Bamburgh Castle is lit up by the dipping sun.
The volcanic origins of the geology around Harkness Rocks has created this raised platform above the sand, which the incoming tide was slamming against. This was another of those occasions where I took multiple tries of this composition, waiting for the waves to smash in just the right way.
A tighter composition, using the crashing of the waves as a leading line itself towards the raised rocks and Bamburgh Castle itself.
On another visit to Bamburgh Castle, we stopped off at its southeastern side to explore more dunes, which included this beautiful field of poppys.
In the same area, this patch of golden lupines gave me another lovely composition towards Bamburgh Castle.