Following on from the dusk and dawn shoots in St Andrews itself I decided to head south along the Fife Coastal Path to have a look at the unusual rock formation called the Rock and Spindle below Kinkell Braes between St Andrews and Boarhills.

I had seen the formation once before on a longer walk back from Kingsbarns and thought at the time it would be nice to visit it again at dusk, so I set out in the middle of the afternoon to get there as the sun was going down.   The sun was still up when I got there, but the formation was in the shade of the cliffs already so I took a few initial shots with the light still on the clouds.

It was just about high tide when I arrived, but there was a nice platform of rock to stand on to view the Rock and Spindle, which also provided a subject in itself with lots of interesting colours and patterns in the rock just at my feet.

The cloud started to build as the sun set, but there were a few moments of nice light in the sky, and looking out over the North Sea from my rocky platform made quite a nice serene image.

The light around sunset also worked well with the Rock and Spindle itself and produced probably my favourite image of the shoot.

As the light faded getting in a bit closer and making use of the formation as a silhouette against the dramatic sky seemed to be the order of the day.

The tide was starting to recede slightly by now, so I was able to step down onto the beach and photograph a tiny waterfall cascading over the seaweed covered rocks at the top of the beach which made a nice detail image.

By this time the light was staring to fade so I made my way back up to the path and made a few more twilight images before heading back along the Fife Coastal Path toward St Andrews.  I’d brought a headtorch with me but there was enough light to get back to the edge of town without it – just!

I made a final couple of images looking back across the East Sands towards St Andrews before the sky was completely dark.  There was a viewpoint near here marked on the local maps, so I made a note to come back at dusk the next day to have a closer look – more on that in the next post!

You can also see some images from the shoot in my collection on 500px.