Hornsea: A portrait of the seaside over one year through the lens of a Yorkshire photographer

"It's full of colour and light and motion, and emotion too I think," said the 63-year-old.

"What we take for granted is under threat. This is my way of capturing a portrait, as it is right now. A moment in time."

Mr Morantz studied in Hull, working in the community arts and with photographic and film workshops before a career in business and market research.

It was a re-evaluation that brought him back to Yorkshire's coastline, to where he first discovered his own creativity, and to Hornsea where he began the project a year ago.

Here the seas are rising. The headlands face a managed retreat under a coastal erosion that is among the worst in Europe.

To Mr Morantz, having never before lived so close to the seas, there was a story to be told.

"What struck me is how different it is every day," he said. "It's not just the water. The beach changes shape every night.

"Every single wave is unique, with so many different moods. I could carry on, every day of my life, and never take the same picture twice.

"I started looking at the pictures and realised there's a lot of hidden light. If you take a shot on a cloudy day the colour is different.

"It's partly the sunlight, it's also the sand in the water. I realised there was a story in there - and a portrait of the sea."

There are 73 images in the photographic exhibition, which runs until March 19.

The story is told in a composite day, with strips of images like an old fashioned film. Two high tides, one low, four seasons, through storms and clouds and calm.

There's the red sky of a warning dawn, against blackened clouds. Then a raging storm, waves slashing and splashing against a battered sea wall. The ebbs and flows of high tide, ripples and rivulets as it drifts away. A tumultuous storm, a final high tide, before a new dawn.

"There are people in the shots, but they are small or silhouetted," said Mr Morantz. "It brings out the aspect that the sea is what is there all the time. It's been there since before humans walked the earth, and likely will long after we’ve gone.

"Lots of people take photographs of the sunrise, which might be spectacular, or there might be clouds with just a shaft of sunlight illuminating the sea like the eye of God on the waves. This is the sea at all times, when it’s calm or when its cloudy.

"You can find all sorts of colours you don't know are there," he added. "One of the last shots looks like a fireworks display. It's dawn to dawn. A whole year, in the space of a day."