Trow Beach, South Shields, 

I took this image at Sunrise in November 2006, I had visited the area earlier to confirm the position of the sunrise as I wished to capture the sun emerging from the sea. However the actual sunrise was disappointing due to the lack of colour in the sky. I was lucky though as high tide had just passed and the rocks were nicely wet and reflective, picking up most of the reflected light and colour.

I set the digital camera up to auto bracket and merged two of the frames, to include the sky from one image and the sea and rocks from the other. I  find this technique is so easy that I rarely use ND graduated filters anymore.