One of our fellow photographers suggested East Lane as a venue for this week’s sunrise.
East Lane is in Bawdsey, Woodbridge Suffolk and would mean a similar but very slightly lesser drive to last week’s Dovercourt Essex trip.
I was initially thinking I’m too tired to go that far and wondered if a nearer location would be better. However, this thought was drowned out by the facts that I’d never been there, and FOMO would trigger if I skipped it, and as a good friend of mine from many years back once said:
You Can Sleep When You’re Dead! (Adrian G., c1990)
It would be an 05:00 get up to meet at 07:15 but thankfully, my tiredness from an early start and a busy and long day at work the day before, I more easily got to sleep earlier the night before.
About East Lane
Like a lot of the locations in the area, East Lane has lots of World War II concrete structures as it used to be a radar station and observation point.
I didn’t take any photos of the structures because I was there for the beach, but you can Google and find plenty of history and information about the structures.
These structures are probably a draw for the urbex (urban exploring) crowd.
A short walk from the car park back up the road, and a left hand turn down a lane takes you to the top of the beach.
It used to be possible to walk along the top of the cliff as a shortcut but a resident of one of the houses there has blocked it off with a sign claiming private land.
Apparently, they get so annoyed at walkers, they will come out and have a pop if you try and walk across. I don’t know if that part of the land is theirs or not, but given how short a time it takes to walk along the road at the back, it’s no problem.
The Shoot
As I drove towards the area, I could see the sky was lighting up with amazing colours. Although I’d been doubtful about even doing this shoot, I could tell right away that perhaps a slightly earlier start may have been in order.
At the top of the cliff, there’s a stunning view of the beach with a circular bay of rocks down below. While we waited for a fellow photographer to find us, I had to take a shot of this scene.
The somewhat famous lone tree in the distance is a signature sight of East Lane – if you look on Google images, you’ll see this tree a lot.
We clambered down to the beach and started walking to where some trees are on the shore. The sky was amazing at this point, with pink, orange, yellow and blue providing us with a spectacle that makes these early morning visits so worthwhile.
While the guys started capturing the trees lying on the beach, I was intrigued by this tree branch and felt it would make a leading like to the tower structure in the distance.
I tried a long exposure to see if I could get some cloud movement but I’d need a lot longer to get the dramatic shot I was after, and the colours in the sky were already starting to dissipate.
I really like the shot, but I can already see that it will not be a competition shot. There’s dead space in the bottom left of the foreground, and the branch interrupts and breaks the horizon. Although I’m not sure that’s a No-No.
Oh so f****** what? I like it, so there – stick that in your wahooney!
I turned to my right and thought I had better do something of a shot with the trees but I did not want to directly copy the other guys.
The shot below captures the tree shapes and the sky colours nicely. There were some strong winds on this morning, and with the wind chill, it was bitterly cold, and getting colder as the morning developed.
The wind has led to this shot having some blur in the leaves – this shot is one with the minimal amount of movement and clearly I didn’t realise at the time as I was merrily shooting away.
One point of interest is that (randomly) one of the branches is touching the sun on the horizon, almost as if it’s plugged in to the light.
I took another shot of this tree but from the side.
A fellow photographer suggested a view to my right zoomed in on the lone tree would be a good shot so I had a look with a longer lens and liked it.
I did a lot of shots here as there was swooshery to be had and I was trying to get a composition with a path in-between the cliff face and the sea water. Even better would be curvy lines along the edge of the incoming or receding water.
I like this and the only downside was that the sky wasn’t anywhere near as great as it was to my left, and earlier on but I can’t move the sun!
For my last set of shots, I grabbed my best scene of the morning (it’s a toss up between this md the tree branch shot earlier) with two rocks which I think may be parts of an old broken pillbox.
The tide was going out but it wasn’t far enough out yet but I couldn’t wait so carefully moved into the sea with my welly boots on.
I was at the angle I wanted but every third or fourth wave, some sea water splashed up over the top of my boot and down my socks! I didn’t care through as I was in the zone.
The other tricky element to capturing this was it was a shot made for a longer exposure but the stronger of the waves was risking tripod movement and blur.
In reality, I had some blurry shots which I realised a bit late, and made me realise I hadn’t noticed earlier on that spray from the waves was leaving water residue on my filters.
I made sure I wiped the filters regularly between shots, and I think I’ve got the shot I had in mind.
My other reflection is that I stopped the aperture down to f/16 as I wanted plenty of depth of field but I’ve gone too far and f/11 would’ve been better, maybe even f/10 or f/9. I think I even focused wrongly too. Why? No idea. Maybe it was the cold?
It was quite slippery as you venture into the sea water, due to the rocks that are present all along the shoreline.
This last snap I got was one of the pillboxes which shows you the flat rocks that you’d be wise to be aware of when walking over them.
It’s a Wrap
With that, we called a wrap and walked back up the beach, back up the cliff. The light was harsh now and the colours had gone, and also the winds were getting stronger. It was bitterly cold and despite the fact that I had two pairs of gloves on, and two pairs of socks on, I couldn’t feel my toes!
After a quick peek at the cottage and the homemade blockade to the cliff, we made our way back to the car park via the same route we got there, and had a debrief with our coffee flasks.
East Lane – Worth Revisiting
There is so much potential at East Lane and my ignorant perception of it had changed dramatically from this maiden visit. It is most certainly a place to revisit. When the tide recedes, there are rocks which appear in the sand and make for great foreground interest.
There are two or three upside down pillboxes in the sea which can also provide opportunities for some interesting shots.
The other observation is that there are a group of trees on the cliff near to the ones which lie on the beach, and it won’t be very long at all before those fall in given the obvious signs of aggressive erosion along the cliff.
There is so much (photographic) potential at East Lane
Learning from the Shoot
Clean your filters
The night before this trip, I had been complaining to my wife about the volume of sensor dust spots on recent images from last couple of weeks, and despite cleaning my sensor and lens, it didn’t appear to be improving.
My wife Kathryn asked if it was my filters? How did she even know to suggest that? Why didn’t I think of that? I got my filters out to find they were grubby and with some spectacle wipes and lint-free cloth gave them a good clean. Sorted!
Check front to back sharpness and aperture!
I am noticing that I’m slipping into using smaller apertures and think I need to watch this to avoid a sharpness drop due to diffraction. The lenses I have are all known to be at their best in the f/8 or close to that.
Onwards and upwards…