Lilac Tinted Views: Exploring England: Sunrise on Barry Island, Cardiff

So it's another Sunday in November, the very last one might I add. I can't believe how quickly this last bit of the year is rolling on by, I know it sounds so cliche to say, but time really is flying! This last week has been pretty busy for me, I seemed to have a whole lot of writing assignments to submit by the end of the weekend, but alas. I have fulfilled most of them right now and would definitely be done by the end of the day so I will call this a productive week all in all.

Last week, I went to see my cousin Koki in Cardiff, she's in her 5th and final year of uni now and the work is piling on high so I decided to go just for some moral support and to use the chance to explore a little bit of Cardiff as well! Kill two birds with one stone why not? She's been doing various studies of change and finding inspiration in different places for her upcoming final design so she suggested we go to Barry Island and document the sunrise. You see, I would have much rather gone for the sunset because I'm lazy and didn't want to get out of bed so early but she'd already been for the sunset earlier that week! Boohoo. So one morning, we dragged our tired selves from bed and met up with Molly, another one of my cousins in Cardiff to go and document the sunrise.

There was a slight delay in the morning train times and we grew quite worried that we would miss the best parts of the show so we snapped a couple of pretty pictures on the train, waking up that early couldn't have been for nothing!

I love the completely accidental symmetry of this photo. You can see the sun peeking through.

We made it to Barry Island in the nick of time and dashed down to the beach to catch what was left of the sunrise, and can I just say we were in for a real treat and surprise?? Turns out, the time that is said to be "sunrise" is when the sun just begins its ascent into the sky so we really didn't miss much at all! Words really can't describe the next set of pictures I took on my phone, I was so upset I didn't have my camera but the iPhone 5 turned out to be better than I could have ever expected!

Everything kept changing, from the position of the sun in the sky to the clouds surrounding it, to the colour of the sky and it was truly magical watching it. Nature always has this way of reminding you of the little things in life, like the rainbow in Lake District. They say the only thing that remains constant in life is change and I'm trying to learn to embrace it. My current situation has so much uncertainty and that used to fill me with a certain unease and dread until I realised that in order to grow, I have to be willing to accept changes. Some of them just might be as beautiful as this sunrise. We were there for probably 45 minutes to an hour and spent about 30 minutes taking pictures every 15 seconds, it was freezing outside but I don't think anyone really minded. Who would?

When we were done we explored the area a little bit more and I managed to take a few more interesting shots. I felt like some professional photographer, exploring different angles and compositions.

I really like this one because it looks like the man down there is walking on water. But it was just a thin film of water from when the tide was drawn in earlier.

I used the iPhone filter "Noir" on this one. I love the effect it created, it looks like a thunderstorm is about to hit or something.

Koki and Molly posed for a couple of silly pictures with the tripod and I couldn't resist the urge to draw in the sand but the cold was becoming unbearable so we said one final goodbye to the rising sun and we were on our way from the enchanting Barry Island.