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.

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.

I took a stroll along the pier, which didn’t exactly offer that much shelter from the wind.

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.

The choppy seas made for some decent photos – and I finally had occasion to shoot at something smaller than f/4.

At the end of the pier things were even more exposed, but it did seem to be keeping people away.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Looking back towards the pier, I saw one of the big yellow signs on the rocks forming the breakwater.

Near these rocks, there were some carved seats looking out to sea.

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.

This was not a problem I had, of course, if the background was interesting enough to shoot with the sun behind me.

I was soon back at shooting into the sun.

There was also some of the usual boating paraphernalia on the beach, well-weathered – just how I like it.

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.

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.

Before setting off, I snapped a little selfie of myself using the R6, which I include if you like that sort of thing.

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.

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.