I received a welcome message from a fellow club member inviting me to an informal meet up for a sunrise shoot at Southwold Pier with a most agreeable 07:00 meet up time, albeit I’d need to peel out of my bed at 05:40.
I’ve only photographed this pier once, later in the day with light far too harsh to get anything particularly noteworthy, so I was looking forward to seeing what I could get.
My mind was instantly thinking of the ‘honeypot’ shot of the pier with the sea and rocks in the foreground. I have no problem with so called honeypot locations as everyone’s shot is unique to them. Even if one of mine looks like someone else’s, at least it’s my shot, I took it and it’s in my collection.
It was dark when we arrived and we scouted both sides of the pier. Some of the guys frequently visit this location and told me there’s always lots of compositions, including plenty from the other side of the pier, if you like the not so honeypot side.
As the light appeared, we got some lovely colours in the sky. I took my first few shots from the promenade but then climbed down to the beach.
I was glad I brought and wore my wellies as although the tide was on its way out, on occasion it was covering my feet on the inward wave. I got a few good shots trying my best to time it to catch the water receding.
I did notice back at base though with all my attention on shutter speed, I’d pushed the ISO up to 800-1000 and perhaps didn’t give enough attention to focus sharpness. It’s not terrible but I do like sharp ‘cut yourself’ images.
I still find 1/6 sec the optimum shutter speed for getting the effect I’m after. With 2 sec delay shooting setting to allow the camera time to stabilise after any potential camera shake with me pressing the button, I have to time the shot just before the waves recede.
After a few shots here, I followed a couple of the other guys under the pier. I did a couple of shots here hearing that there were a couple of good compositions but it wasn’t doing it for me.
I moved to the other side of the pier, and did a few shots from this side trying to catch a natural motion with a bit of blur in the oncoming waves. I like this shot but the lovely colours and light had long since gone.
What was interesting was that I saw no need for filters at all. The light was such that the sky caused me no issues, and I could achieve some blur in the water at around 0.6 sec so no need for the ND filters today. I’m still debating whether or not I need to add back graduated ND filters for bright horizons back into my bag.
Some of the guys went the other side of the groynes and did some shots back at the pier from there. They looked amazing but I didn’t want to copy, not today anyway, and with the sky now grey and the rain starting to fall, it felt like the trip had reached its natural end, and I felt fine packing up and having a reflective chat with the guys on the promenade while sipping coffee from the flask.
We all agreed it had been a good year for photo shoots and discussed some locations we’d like to visit in future.
I made my way home, my habitual McDonalds breakfast en route, and while my shots were uploading, I went back to bed for a couple of hours catch up sleep.
All in all, a great location and one I will definitely visit a few more times to try out lots of similar and different compositions.
Onwards and upwards…