Creative Splurges

2024-04-12 18:48:00

Worthing

I had a day off at the start of March, and with it being a relatively nice day and with me feeling a bit restless I decided to take a drive to the coast for some fresh air. Knowing it was not that far away, I decided to head to Worthing, thinking that alongside the fresh air I might also be able to take a few photos with my new lens.

Typically, the first outing for my new, faster lens saw me start by shooting at f/8.
1/1000sec, f/8, ISO 100, 24mm
It was quite a bit windy, making for choppy seas, which did no favours for me being able to feel my fingers after a little while. Still, it made the water more interesting in the pictures.
1/640sec, f/8, ISO 100, 24mm
I took a stroll along the pier, which didn’t exactly offer that much shelter from the wind.

1/4000sec, f/4, ISO 100, 24mm

The barrier to the right of the above photos contained lots of glass art (which I’m sure has a more technical name). In this next, wider shot of the pier the early spring light was backlighting them just enough to make the colours pop. Shooting into sunlight, I closed up the aperture as small as it would go, partly to avoid overexposing, and partly because I wanted to see how small it would get and didn’t open it back out again.
1/125sec, f/22, ISO 100, 24mm
The choppy seas made for some decent photos – and I finally had occasion to shoot at something smaller than f/4.
1/320sec, f/3.2, ISO 100, 45mm
At the end of the pier things were even more exposed, but it did seem to be keeping people away.
1/500sec, f/8, ISO 100, 24mm
On my loop back to land I saw some pipes on the side of the pier, which was just the sort of grotty industrial thing I like to photograph.
1/1250sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 27mm
There were a few more people on the other side of the pier, probably because the wind was blowing from the other direction and the colourful glass panes in the middle offered a small amount of reprieve from the wind.
1/4000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 35mm
As I walked along, I saw a man fishing from the pier. Ever keen to avoid being spotted photographing someone, and looking for something a bit more different, I took a picture of him through one of the coloured panes of glass.
1/640sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 32mm
Annoyingly, I think the autofocus decided to lock onto my reflection rather than the fisherman. It’s a different shot, sure, but I think I’d have rather taken a proper picture.

As I got back to the start of the pier, I decided to take a nice long exposure of the waves underneath it. I don’t yet have any sort of ND filter for my main lens, and I didn’t have my tripod with me either, but regardless, it’s generally easier to do long exposures on my iPhone using the Spectre app.

15sec, ISO 80, iPhone 15 Pro wide camera

Getting an exposure like this with my R6 would have been quite a faff and required a tripod and a pretty strong neutral density filter.

Near the pier there were some works going on, which means there were a few bits of machinery to take a picture of.
1/4000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 34mm1/3200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm
I don’t want to pass judgement on the state of Worthing, since many of the UK’s seaside towns have seen better days, but it does appear that at least some of it has been on fire.
1/800sec, f/7.1, ISO 100, 24mm
As I strolled along the beach, I saw a woman taking photographs with her phone. I fired off a few sneaky shots of her silhouetted against the sea.

1/8000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm

The shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second is about as fast as the shutter will go in my camera, giving an idea of how bright it was (not helped by my insisting on shooting at f/2.8).

The wind didn’t really let up, but it did mean the sea remained a bit lively, which was great for when it crashed into the groynes.

1/2000sec, f/8, ISO 100, 48mm

I may have overdone the vignetting when editing that photo. If you’re reading this then it means I didn’t bother to go back and tweak it after noticing that whilst writing this post.

A bit further on I saw the same woman with her phone from earlier.
1/2500sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm
When I had the idea of visiting Worthing to take photos, what I had in my mind was boats parked along the beach. Eventually, when I wandered a bit further away from the town, the beach started to deliver.
1/3200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
Looking back towards the pier, I saw one of the big yellow signs on the rocks forming the breakwater.
1/4000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm
Near these rocks, there were some carved seats looking out to sea.
1/3200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 28mm
The problem I encountered was, ironically, the weather that had encouraged me there in the first place. The sun was bright, relatively low in the sky as it was only just spring, and if I wanted to get pictures of boats with the sea in the background, then the sun was also behind them, making for less than ideal shooting conditions.

What I soon realised I had to do was resort to HDR shooting, something I’ve not needed to use for a while. Normally, as I shoot raw, I can pull the needed detail out of a single exposure without the faff (as I did in the picture of the red machine above). But in this case, the light extremes were just too harsh to get away with it.

The first few HDR shots were done very manually, using the control ring on my lens to adjust the exposure between shots, entirely because I hadn’t found where the auto bracketing setting was in my R6. Later on, I did find it, making things a bit easier.
f/2.8, ISO 100, 32mm (HDR)
This was not a problem I had, of course, if the background was interesting enough to shoot with the sun behind me.
1/3200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 26mm
I was soon back at shooting into the sun.
f/2.8, ISO 100, 40mm (HDR)f/2.8, ISO 100, 43mm (HDR)f/5.6, ISO 100, 70mm (HDR)
There was also some of the usual boating paraphernalia on the beach, well-weathered – just how I like it.
1/2000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 43mm
At this end of the beach, there was another digger. Luckily the light was in my favour and I didn’t need to resort to multiple exposures.
1/5000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 43mm
Eventually I sat down for a rest in the cold wind. There I saw another of those ‘keep off’ signs, and wanting a shot of one with the sea and a groyne in the background, I resorted to a set of HDR exposures for the last time this wander.
f/2.8, ISO 100, 43mm (HDR)
Before setting off, I snapped a little selfie of myself using the R6, which I include if you like that sort of thing.
1/3200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
As I set off back, I stopped by another of the groynes to get some long exposures of the waves with my phone, which came out quite nicely.
9sec, ISO 64, iPhone 15 Pro wide camera
I strolled back along the promenade, breathing in the sea air. In the reverse direction, nothing caught my eye from the different angle, so I took no further photos, but I did make sure to sit by the sea taking things in, and stop for a bag of chips whilst I was there.

All-in-all it was a nice little trip, and the sort of thing I should do a little more often just because it’s not very far from where I live.

#BW #boats #coast #monochrome #Photography #sussex #water

My Kit

It’s pretty obligatory these days for a photography website to reveal what equipment is being used. Maybe it’s bragging, maybe it’s just a courtesy so someone in the market for some new…

^{Rob (Creative Splurges)}