Dungeness

Another exciting but tiring day - I set the alarm for 5am so that I was showered, dressed and ready to meet in the hotel reception by 5.30am so that we could get some pre-dawn shots followed by some of the sunrise. Of course I woke up at 4am as I was worried I would over sleep! The sunrise turned out to be a soft pink and not very dramatic at all - see the extra photo. We stayed photographing the Eastbourne Pier in the early morning light until about 7.30am and then we walked back to the hotel for breakfast.

After breakfast Lee gave us a lesson on processing mono images, and then we headed off for Hastings where we wanted to photograph the pier. The ideal conditions for long exposure photography is cloudy weather with dull light - and today it was blue skies, sunny and bright! I have never wished for dull skies before but today that happened.

From Hastings we went on to Dungeness, the much photographed shingle ledge that has derelict fishing huts and boats scattered all around, a desolate and bleak landscape that can best be described as a fishing boat graveyard. Ideal weather to capture the bleakness and moodiness of the place is dull light and clouds - but of course we had bright blue skies with hardly any clouds at all! We did a bit of long exposure photography (see extra) but eventually I took normal exposure photos. No filter was used in this image, the sky was really that blue although the wide angle lens does seem to emphasize that colour.

After a busy day we got back to Eastbourne after 6pm, and after saying goodbye to everyone, I headed off for home. The others live further away and so had booked in for another night. I got home at 8pm, very tired but excited to see my images from the day.

Thank you so much for the positive response I received on yesterday's image, it is sitting well up on the first page of 'popular' for which I am very grateful. Again, I am too tired (shattered in fact!) to spend anytime looking at journals tonight, tomorrow is a big catch up day!