An Inspirational Morning on Bispham Beach

I have been taking photographs of the skies around Britain for ten years or so, because they can be stunningly beautiful, often transient with only minutes between the spectacular and subdued, and different on different days and at different times of year. We British often talk negatively about the weather, and recent heavy rains and severe flooding have given some justification, but I absolutely love its diversity and its challenges.

Ali said some weeks ago that he had ideas in his head for a video to The Sun Goes Round The Moon from the imminent Dry The Life EP, and he said it with such devilment and determination that I just gave him his lead. I think I can generally tell when he knows he’s on to something really special. His vision was of silhouettes against a rising sun and fading moon, with colours not dissimilar to those on the Dry The Life video we filmed with Kieran on Midsummer Night.

We needed clear skies and for the tide at Bispham to be almost fully out. That meant it had to be at the start of a day where the tide was compliant. We wanted to do the filming this week so were keeping an eagle eye on the weather forecasts, in so much as they can be believed. With Friday looking like an overcast and probably rainy day and with business commitments stopping me from getting out there earlier in the week, this was probably our only opportunity for a couple of weeks.

This morning was no Midsummer Night! It was -2 degrees on the beach at Bispham, and the slight breeze coming from the sea made it feel much colder. How Ozzy could dive into puddles or sit in them in those conditions I will never know – and I severely doubt he knows! But with extreme cold weather can come the most stunning of skies, and the pastel colours we shot this morning were up there with the Aurora Borealis. I could tell before Ali opened his mouth that this was the backdrop he had envisaged and hoped for, just as mine was when we were about to shoot Dry The Life in Heysham.

I was born and brought up in a three bedroom semi-detached house on Norcliffe Road and as kids we spent a lot of time on the vast expanse of Bispham beach. Bispham is to the north of Blackpool and far enough away from the former throngs of tourists to retain its peace and quiet. Most of the resort is quiet now, even in the middle of summer, and the deck chairs that once carpeted the sands between the piers have long since disappeared.

While central Blackpool beaches may have changed, Bispham’s has largely remained the same. Although it will never be my home again it still has a feeling of home, or at least familiarity. I wanted to shoot a number of videos from my hometown because of the memories, because some family and friends still live in Blackpool, and because I have witnessed many times before the tranquillity of the northern beaches very early in the morning, at times of stress or sleeplessness, or just because I took a detour there on the way home from pubs or parties.

I collected Ali from his house at 6am. If you track back from that time I had to take Ozzy for a short walk before the car journey after he had been fed, put a cover on the back seat so he didn’t leave half the beach on it, de-ice the windows and warm the car up for that first 20 minutes of my journey. I’d had a lousy night’s sleep, and slept through the initial 5am alarm. I love the early mornings so I am not normally so averse to dragging myself out of bed but this morning felt like an imposition. However, when you suffer for your art you generally achieve amazing results, so that cruel awakening plus Ali’s hands freezing in charge of a Steadicam while we were on the beach were both well worth it.

We took some incredible footage, both photographs and video, as the dark of the rust red skies mellowed into graded pastel hues from a cloudless, uniform, mid-blue canopy. What we got was precisely what Ali had envisaged, so all we have to do now is edit the footage and splice it all together. That will take longer than our frozen early morning adventure, and we will do that in a couple of weeks once we are properly thawed.

The Dry The Life EP is already available on Bandcamp and as of 6th January is also on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, Deezer, and Shazam! https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/album/dry-the-life-ep