The waves from Storm Babet were so big and unrelenting that the dome from South Shields lighthouse eventually succumbed to the endless battery and came off. Its not difficult to see why.

I live for photographing stormy conditions, be it supercells in the US or the low pressure bombs that affect our shores during the autumn and winter months. And though I've photographed and documented plenty such storms along the south coast when I used to live there, none of them had the ferocity of Babet or kicked up such gigantic crashing waves. For one to partly destroy the timeless resilience of one the UK's longest standing lighthouses is testimony to that power. I wish all storms were like this.

As you can imagine, such a shot was difficult to capture given the strength of the winds. Shot handheld at 300mm, I had to hunker down behind a small wall, shield the camera from the rain as much as possible and then, like a sniper, zoom in and take my shot as soon as a wave approached.

This was the last shot I took before the dome came off.