Cottage near Menai Bridge

I watched a professional photographer (Glyn Davies of Anglesey), on an ITV programme about the Menai Straits, speak about a photograph he had taken of this cottage. I thought that I should like to capture my take on the image and, soon afterwards, I visited Anglesey. Later that day I visited Glyn's studio and explained what I had been doing and he gave me a postcard of his photo. My shot looks quite different and I think that Glyn may have merged at least two photos from different standpoints to achieve his image. Mine is a single image edited in Lightroom. I feel that I was lucky in that, on the day, I arrived just as the rising Sun rose from behind the cottage casting those rays. I didn't even have time to set up my tripod. I just grabbed my camera from its bag, ran down the beach and clicked the shutter. The result was pure luck. I hadn't checked my focus, aperture, sensitivity or anything. I took lots of other shots that morning because I wasn't sure how that first shot had worked out. However, after that shot, the rays disappeared and the sky was totally bleached out. Still, I got what I had gone for. Sometimes luck seems to be 75% of the deal.