West Pier, Brighton

Today was the first day of the long exposure coastal workshop. The forecast was for rain so we did not bother to get up early for a sunrise. After breakfast we walked over the road from our hotel and spent a few hours photographing the Eastbourne Pier and beach scenes - unfortunately it was raining which made it a bit tricky - not only was I faffing about with composing, measuring the light, working out the exposure plus 10 stops, then adding the 10 stop ND filter, timing the exposure on my phone...I was also having to continually wipe the rain spots off my filters between shots. It took ages to get a few photos with exposures of about 1.5 minutes each. It eventually stopped raining and we had lovely soft light through the clouds all day. When the sun eventually started coming out later this afternoon we were not pleased as bright light is not good for these type of long exposure images!

After Eastbourne we changed locations and went to Brighton, to photograph the famous Grade 1 listed but now derelict West Pier. We had  a few hours there but high tide was not for a few hours so we moved on to an area near the marina where we photographed some groynes and breakwaters. The waves were quite high there and at one point a few of us got our feet and the bottom of our legs soaked, so I had wet feet for the rest of the day. Back then to Brighton where the tide had risen enough for the bottom of these posts to be covered with water. Finally we went to Shoreham and photographed some beacons in the water. We got back to the hotel just before 8pm - it has been a long and busy day.

We were going to have a session tonight on processing black and white images but everyone is really tired, by the time we finished supper it was quite late and as we are up at 5am tomorrow morning to get to the pier before sunrise we decided to have an early night instead. 

I have not had time to even look at all my images yet, but I saw this one and so quickly processed it and uploaded it for blip. It is a direct frontal shot of West Pier. 

Apologies but I have no time to look or comment on journals, I will catch up when I get home.