Tag: Sussex

Blog, Landscapes

Up early again

Dave Wares

Yes, your truly managed to pull himself out of bed for another mornings shoot. This time I wanted to make some images at a stretch of beach between Hastings and Bexhill, having passed this beach many times on the train and seeing the large amount of rock exposed while the tide is out I had to make a visit. Once again the sky was too clear for my liking but this was not that much of a problem as there was more than enough going on in the foreground. I arrived at the beach while it was still dark to give me plenty of time to look for the best spot, and just as it was starting to get light I happened upon this area, where there was a nice mix of rock, sand ripples and water. Happy with my location I went about trying to find the best composition.

I was most pleased to find this patch where the sand and water seems to sweep around the bottom of the picture. I took this landscape version first then took the vertical shot (above). I like both versions but there is something about the vertical one that seems to connect the viewer to the scene even more,  a greater sense of ‘being there’ perhaps. Maybe that’s just me though.

Having tried a few different compositions I headed out to the waters edge in an attempt to get some misty water action, but alas the tide (once again) was too calm. Due to the increase in light my exposures were rapidly getting shorter and by the time I found this group of rocks I was lucky if I got a couple of seconds at f22.

All of this happened before the sun had got over the horizon; in fact when it did rise the atmosphere had all but evaporated and I ended up tripping the shutter only a couple more times. Happy with my results I packed up and headed for home and a nice mug of coffee.

Blog, Landscapes, Mono

Mono Monday-Wood and Water

Dave Wares

Title-‘Wood & Water’

As the Sun continued to rise, the lovely warm colours that I had been lucky enough to capture on this particular morning ( see here) slowly began to disappear, being replaced by a light blue and rather bland sky. Seeing these worn and battered posts I knew that I had to get a couple of shots of them before heading back towards the WW2 Pill Box. Initially not knowing how to frame this mass of wood, a short wander around to the right revealed this simple composition and I knew straight away that this had the potential for a minimalist black and white image. Processing this in Lightroom took next to no time, using the low contrast Black and white preset then tweaking the clarity slider to soften the image a little. I did consider bleaching out the whites, but for me this made the image too stark and it lost some of its feel. I decided that a slight letterbox simplified things even further, getting rid of unnecessary space from both top and bottom.

I reckon this would be nice as a fine art print using matte paper or perhaps as a gallery wrap canvas.

Blog, HDR, Urbex

Pett Level Pill box revisit

Dave Wares

Having set off from a successful shoot at Winchelsea beach I headed back towards Pett level and decided to make a return visit to the WW2 pill box. I had made a short visit here earlier in the year but only took a few pics of the pill box itself. The old magazine and gun emplacement still exists and can be found about 20 yards down to the left and it was here that I wanted to get a better look at this time.

As you walk across you can see the concrete roof and this walled trench linking one part to another. Moving down a little further reveals the entrance and steps down into the main areas where access is very easy indeed. The main thing I found was how dark it was in side the main room, taking me a good few minutes for my eyes to adjust.

As you can see by all the tagging there have been many visitors down here over the years. The exposures needed to get the shots from inside this room were quite long, ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to get the brackets needed to make the HDR image you see here.

As you move on from the room pictures above you enter into the magazine area and then through towards the trench you can see from the second picture taken from up top. A you walk through there are two more small rooms/storage areas to your right and then straight ahead is a partial ladder which gets you back up top…Well at least it used to; this and a couple of other holes have been covered over with metal grates presumably to stop people falling down after dark.

There’s a fair amount of tagging covering the walls of this place, unfortunately nothing of any note.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little visit, thanks for looking.

Blog, Landscapes

Morning bliss at Winchelsea Beach

Dave Wares

‘iso200 50mm 4sec at f16’

So it’s 5.30am Sunday morning and my alarm had just gone off.  With one thing and another it has been quite a while since I’ve had the chance to get up early to do some photography, but today I’m making a concerted effort to get out there. The weather this past week has been absolutely superb and is due to continue for a few days more, so I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to make the most of it. With camera bag all packed and ready to go I threw on some clothes, grabbed my hiking shoes and set off out.

‘iso200 50mm 4sec at f22’

Winchelsea beach is only about a 15-20 min drive from my house but even so, by the time I reached the car park it was already beginning to get light, though sunrise still was still some time to go. I grabbed my bag and tripod and quickly headed for the beach. Great, the tide was in and the waves were still gently lapping around the now rather worn wooden posts. This is one of those locations where you want the tide to be in if you want to get nice shots of water around the posts. It’s a great location when the tide is out too if long stretches of sandy beach is what you’re after.

I was a little worried about how the sky would look as there wasn’t a cloud to be seen, but there was just enough transition in colour to keep it interesting as long as I composed to have the horizon around  a third down from the top. In fact this is what I wanted as my aim was to get some long exposures to try to turn the water misty and add more atmosphere to the already gorgeous colours. The exposures for the most part were around 4-6 seconds at either f16 orf22, so certainly long enough for the water to blur but the sea was just a little too calm for my liking and I didn’t get as much mist as I would’ve liked, larger waves would’ve done the job.

‘iso200 50mm 4sec at f22’

As you can see I did move around a bit trying slightly different compositions, and after about half an hour or so and being quite pleased with some of the results I packed up my gear and headed back towards Pett Level and the old WW2 pill box…

Blog, HDR

A Modern classic

Dave Wares

OK, so I found a little extra time to do a post on a little something that I stumbled across yesterday afternoon during a family day out.

So on Sunday afternoon my wife and I decided to take the kids to a medieval event going on at Bodiam castle. The camera of course was coming along but I was only expecting to be taking family snaps as I wasn’t really sure what to expect. However, upon arrival the parking attendant directed me to a spot right beside a group of classic old cars, namely the Morgan. I parked right beside four of them, fantastic look vehicles, and one of them I had never seen before; a modern incarnation that was in keeping with the old design  but with a new slant. If I’m to believe the year 04 on the plate then it’s still a good 7 years old, but still fairly new in the scheme of things.

Due to the harsh light of the mid afternoon sun, shooting brackets for HDR was really the only option if I wanted to keep all the detail on the car and in the sky. I didn’t take my tripod though, so I did as best I could to keep as still as possible to get my 3 brackets of +/-2ev. I also had the shutter set to continuous shooting.

I found myself sitting on the grass, legs spread out and leaning back in order to frame the pictures in a way that I found pleasing. You can see a glimps of one of the older versions parked next to this one, and of course I took a few pics of those too. I shall show those in a future post though.

A modern classic.

A very cool surprise indeed, just goes to show that you should always be prepared.

Thanks for stopping by.

Blog, HDR, Landscapes

Birling Gap

Dave Wares

Title-‘Going, going…’

So here are a couple more shots from my trip down to Birling Gap last Tuesday. Perhaps not the most exciting light you ever saw but it was very nice to be out with the camera nonetheless; that’s the one thing I love about this type of photography, the excuse to rid your mind of those everyday tasks and enjoy the experience of involving yourself with nature.

All in all I ended up with around half a dozen shots that I’m quite pleased with, a success in my book. Having started out shooting slides I still work on the principle of 4-5 shots out of 36 being a good crop.

I do love the almost mirror like reflections between the sand ripples.

Title-‘Wet sands’