I was having a difficult time choosing a location for some landscape photography and a good walk. Finally I chose on a road-trip along the east Sussex coast from Cliff End near Pett then to go onto Camber Sands and finally Dungerness in Kent to capture some Seascapes.
Pett Cliff End Seascapes
My first port of call was Cliff End Pett just out of Hastings. I planned the visit to coincide with low tide as apparently there are visible remains of an ancient Bronze age forest that once stood here.
The weather was going to be a mixed bag today, cloudy with some sunshine, small chance of some rain. While I was walking on the beach at Cliff End, the sun was regularly poking through the clouds behind me lighting up the face of the cliff.
I was happy to be here with the sun shining, breathing in the fresh air. The cliffs here stretch all the way to Hastings Rock A Nore and are very unstable if doing a beach walk at low tide so beware.
I did want to try an experiment with some long exposure photography to maybe get some streaky clouds. I did try a 6 stopper ND filter but made no difference. Only cutting down the shutter speed to 0.3 sec at F/11. not nearly slow enough to streak the slow moving clouds above, would probably require a big stopper like 10 or 15.
Camber Sands Seascapes
I returned to my car and carried on the journey down to Camber Sands passing Pett Levels, Winchelsea and Rye. Camber Sands is a beautiful beach with high rising sand dunes. When the weather is good its popular with day trippers and holiday makers. There is a Pontins holiday camp just behind which I have stayed at a few times in days gone by. On a sunny day in summer you would wonder why anyone would ever want to go abroad lapping up the sun and sea at Camber Sands. Only to be reminded why when the rest of the week it poured down with rain.
I arrived around 10AM and paid for 1 hours parking at £1.50, I just wanted to scout the location and gets some seascapes from within the sand dunes. With the cloudy sky there were not too many people about, but at this time they were beginning to turn up. From within the sands dunes at Camber sands you can see Cliff End there in the distance.
Amazes me while I had left visiting this beach for so long? I must return to Camber Sands when the light is alot better like dawn or dusk out of season.
I was using a polariser to cut out any reflections and with the sun at a 90 degree angle but high now. There was quite a breeze blowing and not really want the reeds in the dunes to have motion blur so increased my ISO by one stop to 200, which seemed to have worked. I was still focusing on infinity and using my lenses sweet spot of F/8 which was giving me front to back sharpness.
To Dungerness
From Camber Sands I carried on to Dungerness and walked round to Denge marsh but there was nothing to photograph here. They wanted £4 to go up to the top of the lighthouse which I thought was too much. But in hindsight as a photographer I should have paid it, could have got some good handheld shots from there. On the drive home stopped off in Dungerness nature reserve before calling it a day.