Patience paid off for Newsquest photographer Adrian Rushton when a supposed puff of smoke proved anything but... as his dramatic shot demonstrates.

A GC German parachute mine packed with 2000lbs of explosives, dredged up off Mersea Island, Essex, was detonated and shot a 400ft pillar of water into the sky.

Adrian, a photographer with the Colchester Evening Gazette, had waited 90 minutes for the explosion - and when it happened, he had a window of just three seconds to get the perfect shot.

He said: "In all honesty, it was more luck than judgment. I knew more-or-less where the explosion was going to be, but not when. I just pointed the camera in the right direction and kept pressing."

Adrian, a staff photographer for the Evening Gazette for three years, used a Canon D30 digital camera, with a 300mm lens plus doubler.

The explosion took place two miles away from shore.

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