How do you go about photographing something that is quite familiar to the people of Llŷn, but in a way that has never been done before? This was the question I asked myself in late November.

I was luckier than most as I knew Robert Jones, the second coxswain very well, and over Sunday dinner, we hatched a plan. We would go down to Porthdinllaen well before dawn. Robert would lower the boat out of the station onto the slip. And I would snap away.

For the next two weeks, we had one of the longest spells of continuous bad weather I can ever remember on Llŷn, and everything was put on hold. We had to have, at the very least a half decent sunrise, or it would have been a complete waste of time.

In the meantime, I went four times to Porthdinllaen, well before dawn, just to have a look around, so I wouldn't be "In at the deep end" when the conditions would be favorable. And I managed to capture Porthdinllaen in a pre-dawn light on three of these occasions, which also gave me good practice with the exposure and other camera settings.

Robert phoned me on the evening of Saturday the 16th, he had been keeping a sharp eye on the weather, and the forecast for next morning looked quite favorable. And at 7:15am next day, Hetty, glided majestically out into the cold twilight. We had decided to take the first few shots, with the floodlights on, but this would be tricky, with a mixture of natural and artificial light. But as the dawn came closer, these were switched off, and only the interior station lights were left on after this.

I exposed for the dark hull, and bracketed by ½ a stop either way , plus a dark gray grad filter was used, to darken the sky, and even the exposure out the best I could.

It turned out to be one of the most beautiful sunrises I had seen in weeks, everything went like clockwork, and I'm more than pleased with the results.

Robert Jones