MyPhotographyButtersLandscape & Travel Photography

A massive, bright orange and yellow sun rising perfectly round against a dark sky above a silhouette of distant trees.

← The Collection

Langstone Harbour Photography: Winter Sunrise

Hampshire & Home27 photographs

Langstone Harbour, Winter Sunrise

There's a particular kind of cold that comes with a Langstone Harbour dawn in winter, the sort that gets into your fingers within the first ten minutes and doesn't let go until the sun's properly up. It's worth every bit of it.

I timed these shots for the narrow window just after the sky starts to lighten but before the colour burns out, that brief stretch where the last of the blue hour is still hanging in the upper sky while the horizon turns orange, then pink, then a colour I don't really have a name for. It doesn't last long. Some mornings it's gone in minutes.

The old windmill anchors most of my favourite frames from here. Its dark silhouette against a lifting sky gives the eye somewhere to land before it wanders off across the mudflats, and depending on where I've walked to, it sits differently against the water each time, sometimes close and looming, sometimes a small dark shape a long way off across the harbour.

Then there's the sun itself. On a clear winter morning it comes up huge and almost perfectly round over the far treeline, distorted just slightly by the cold air low on the horizon, and for a few minutes you can shoot it almost straight on without it blowing out the frame completely. I don't get that many mornings like it.

Langstone at low tide is its own kind of landscape. The receding water leaves behind ribbed channels in the mud that catch the low light and lead the eye straight through a frame, and I spend as much time looking down at that as I do looking at the sky. Add in the wooden groynes and old mooring posts standing half-buried in the silt, and there's no shortage of foreground to work with.

The birdlife makes it, though. Mute swans drifting past in the pink light, oystercatchers picking through the shallows, flocks of small waders lifting off the mudflats all at once for no reason I could ever work out. On a quiet, still morning the harbour is genuinely loud with them.

It's a short walk from the car, which makes it an easy place to keep coming back to, and different enough each visit, depending on tide, cloud and how cold I was prepared to get, that I don't think I've taken the same photograph twice.

The iconic windmill and waterfront buildings casting clear reflections into smooth water under an orange sky.
The sun breaking over a dark, tree-lined coast, casting a long golden reflection across the still sea.
A white dinghy with a blue cover resting on calm water with a soft-focus historic stone tower in the distance.
A small white boat floating on shimmering amber water with a soft-focus tree line silhouetted in the background.
A wide view of the coastal marsh and still water reflecting a gradient of yellow to deep blue early morning sky.
The iconic dark windmill tower and brick mill building at the water’s edge during a calm, clear dawn.
Old timber stumps rising from perfectly still, misty water under a pale peach and grey morning sky.
Soft pink and blue dawn sky above the wooden bridge structure with a solitary blue boat on green marshland.
Sunbeams breaking through dark, low-hanging orange clouds over a quiet coastal tide with distant boat masts.
Two white swans swimming on violet water reflecting dramatic streaks of pink and red dawn clouds.
A line of mossy wooden sea defences stretching into calm water under a soft yellow and amber sunrise sky.
Brick mill building and wooden jetty silhouette against a fiery orange and pink dawn sky over the water.
A peaceful, soft peach-coloured sky over a quiet shoreline where birds fly and gather near silhouetted trees on a small island.
A single, delicate plume of a golden winter reed captured in sharp focus against a beautifully blurred, warm-toned background.
A thin crescent moon hangs in a deep blue twilight sky next to a traditional street lamp and a brick waterfront building.
Striking layers of deep magenta, orange, and blue clouds casting a vibrant glow across the calm waters of the harbour.
A massive, bright orange and yellow sun rising perfectly round against a dark sky above a silhouette of distant trees.
A close-up of a weathered wooden gate with decorative iron scrolls, with the dark silhouette of Langstone Windmill against a purple dawn sky.
A flock of coastal birds flying low over shimmering mudflats under a sweeping expanse of pink and orange clouds.
Large foreground rocks on a coastal bank looking out across a wide bay at a soft orange and grey sunrise.
A dramatic morning sky filled with fiery orange and red clouds reflecting intensely across wet, dark mudflats.
Golden-brown winter reed beds in the foreground with silhouettes of bare trees against a vibrant pink and purple morning sky.
A perfectly round yellow and orange sun rising directly over a dark landmass and rippling coastal waters.
Tall, golden winter reeds flanking a still pond that reflects a brilliant pink and purple morning sky.
A massive orange sun setting or rising on the horizon with two birds silhouetted close to the solar disc.
A solitary bird soaring through a glowing orange sky directly above the rising sun and dark foreground bushes.
Two birds silhouetted against a vibrant orange morning sky as the bright sun rises over dark, dense treelines.

You might also like

Mute swan standing on a grassy bank at sunset with golden light hitting its white feathers and a coastal horizon behind.The Swans of Langstone HarbourSouthsea Queens Hotel Aerial Drone Sunset, Southsea and Old Portsmouth, HampshireSouthsea and Old PortsmouthA thin crescent of the eclipsed sun setting into the sea behind the silhouette of a sailboat off IbizaSolar Eclipse Sunset, Ibiza

Back to The Collection