Eastbourne Pier at Sunrise | Weekly Photo #96
The good thing about living on a relatively small island is that you never have to travel too far to get to a beach. From where I live, it’s about an hour’s drive to my nearest beech down on England’s south coast and throughout the year I’ll visit the various coastal spots numerous times, either for a day out with my family or to take photos as I did when I photographed this epic sunrise during a trip to Eastbourne’s charming Victorian pier last summer.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF23mm F2 | 23mm | 1/1,250th Second | f/2.8 | ISO160
My intention as I travelled down to the South Coast was to take a long exposure photograph of Eastbourne’s ornate pier from up on the pebbled beach. So, when packing my bag, I knew my main camera (Fujifilm XT2) would be stuck on top of the tripod taking long-exposure images which is why I also packed my smaller Fujifilm X-T30 camera with the 23mm prime lens attached so I could wander around, capturing different compositions without having to move the other camera. I’m so glad I did.
After an hour or so of taking long exposures from higher up on the beach, I noticed the tide had receded, uncovering some of the sandy beach and with it still being wet, there was an opportunity to capture some cool reflections too. So, with no one around, I felt confident I could leave my other camera in position on the tripod and wandered down, close to the pier to take some handheld shots, using the reflections in the sand as some foreground interest.
By now, the sun had risen above the horizon behind a thin layer of cloud. This worked out pretty well as the defused light was still bright enough to allow me to capture all of that gorgeous golden colour but wasn’t too bright, meaning the dynamic range between the lights and dark was still manageable. By exposing for the highlights, keeping an eye on the histogram for any clipping, I knew I would still have plenty of detail in the shadows and be able to pull it back in post-production.
Placing the pier towards the top of the frame helped portray the scale of the structure in front of me but with the ground being so close to the camera, there was no way I could get the entire scene sharp from front to back in a single shot so embracing the smaller depth of field, I opened up the aperture to f/2, throwing the foreground out of focus allowing me to capture the colour and shapes reflecting in the sand but softening it enough to remove the distraction of those messy pebbles, scattered across the sand.
The X-T30 and 23mm f/2 is a super lightweight combination and with a wide maximum aperture of F2, I can quickly find unique angles and shoot handheld without worrying about camera shake and ending up with blurry photos so as I crouched down trying not to fall over and with the camera hovering just above the wet sand, I quickly rattled off a few photos before my legs gave way.
It was such a great morning for photography and when I felt the best of the sunrise light was gone, I wasn’t quite finished taking photos so I took advantage of the great location I was in and drove a few minutes along the coast up to the top of Beechy Head to capture a few shots of the lighthouse from the clifftop. I wrapped the entire morning’s shoot into an on-location blog post which you can read all about by clicking the thumbnail below.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.