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26.01.09

Shooting seaside winters

Words by Liz Walker

The British seaside resort in winter: windswept, shabby, down-at-heel. Behind the gaudy hoardings, amusement arcades and kiss-me-quick shopfronts, there’s a brooding sense of anticlimax and desolation tinged with foreboding as to the winter storms to come.

Once the throngs of holidaymakers have gone home, the real town emerges, blinking, in the low-angled winter sunlight. Traffic congestion and queues are no more, making it easy to park the car and stroll around with your camera on foot. The glitzier elements of seaside entertainment – ice cream vans and donkey rides, end-of-pier shows and fairground rides – are all boarded up against the weather.

Paintwork is left to peel until spring; Georgian hotel facades are shuttered up to crumble away quietly; stripy deckchairs are stacked under flapping tarpaulin; beach huts are battened down and padlocked. But it’s here – once all the gloss and candy floss has gone – that you’ll discover a rich seam of photo potential.

Best approach is to book into a seaside hotel for a weekend of unfettered picture-taking, or into one of hundreds of overheated B&Bs, run by blue-rinsed widows with a penchant for frilly net curtains and doilies. This setting will help focus your mind on the matter at hand. Seaside accommodation should be cheaper at this time of year, but don’t be surprised if it isn’t: try negotiating an out-of-season rate and make the most of the quiet dining room by tucking into a full English each morning to keep your energy reserves high!

Next, get hold of a map of the town and all its kitschy attractions. Don’t worry about using an Ordnance Survey Explorer on this occasion: most seaside resorts have a simple layout comprising high street, pier and promenade.

One final preparation is to check the weather forecast (bbc.co.uk/weather) and tide times. If you’re lucky you’ll be greeted by a weekend of blue skies, fluffy white clouds and low-angled winter sunlight. This will deliver bold punchy colours and contrasty lighting, long dramatic shadows and fresh-looking skies. But don’t despair if gloomy overcast conditions and drizzle present themselves.

Instead, focus on shooting cropped-in macro details and dramatic storm clouds using a neutral density grad to exaggerate the cloud detail. If the weather is really dull, you can always make the most of the leaden sky by converting your digital image to black & white and burning in some extra cloud detail later, in Photoshop.

Colourful pier and street lights reflected in wet pavements make a good fall-back option if the heavens really do open: another idea is to set up incongruous photos of soaking-wet shoppers dodging puddles as they rush past jaunty summer-souvenir shops.

The best way to prepare for the weather is to invest in some comfy walking boots, gloves, hat and a waterproof jacket and fleece. Take layers off as you get too hot and put them on while you stand still to take photos. Wear your boots in beforehand to stay comfy and blister-free – especially important if walking across a rough pebble beach.

Start your initial recce by heading out to the promenade before breakfast, with your full camera kit and a tripod, to assess the pier’s potential. Mostly built during the Victorian era, these noble wrought iron and steel structures form an imposing and dynamic lead-in line, as they thrust out across the beach into the wintry nothingness, with the dull grey sea sloshing about their ankles.

In winter, the pier may be shrouded in sea mist in the morning, lending an eerie, gothic note to your compositions. To make the most of this scenario, shoot the structure from its most attractive side, using a low, wide-angled vantage point on the beach, with the camera on a tripod. Frame the shot so the pier makes a diagonal, stretching right across the picture area for maximum impact.

With an east-facing pier you’ll have the opportunity to shoot into the sun, turning the structure into an ornate silhouette with the sun in frame. Slight underexposure may deliver more vibrant sky colours, but keep an eye on your DSLR’s histogram so the exposure doesn’t go too dark, turning the mid-tones a sooty black.

If your seaside resort doesn’t have a pier, there’ll be plenty of other early-morning photo opportunities to explore: fishing boats hauled up on the beach, stacks of lobster pots, shellfish stands, rusty anchors, gnarled sea groynes, flotsam and jetsam, ropes, seaweed, nets, herring gulls and so on. These subjects might sound prosaic but given the right low-angled winter sunlight they’re transformed into glowing works of beach art.

Use a macro lens or telephoto zoom set to its closest focusing point to fill the frame and isolate the detail from its setting. Vary your framing and angle of view to make sure you’ve got the most dynamic composition. Try looking directly down upon smaller subjects (such as coils of rope or glistening pebbles in wet sand) and keep your own shadow out of frame for bold, graphic details.

For larger subjects (such as upturned dinghies or stacks of lobster pots) kneel down low to get a 3/4-on view, cropping tight, perhaps getting close with a wide-angle lens for added drama. Varying focal length and your vantage point for each new subject and assessing it in DSLR playback mode will help you refine composition as you go.

There’ll be plenty of abstract opportunities to pursue too, focusing on texture, pattern and the colour of the subject. Why not set yourself a challenge or theme for the weekend: ‘blue subjects’ or ‘spheres and circles’ for instance, to help generate a cohesive set of abstract pictures. With these subjects, it’s often better to simplify the scene, cropping bits out to generate maximum graphic impact in the viewfinder.

After breakfast, you may find the low-angled winter sunlight is brighter and clearer, but with the sun slightly higher in the sky, remember that shadows will be shorter and colours less intense. After exploring the pier, beach and promenade all morning, take refuge in a seafront café to sit and watch the local characters going about their business.

Now’s the time to watch for people pictures: out-of-season sunbathers, surfers and swimmers, cyclists and skateboarders, fishermen selling their wares fresh on the beach, salty seadogs watching the world go by, with character etched all over their faces.

Take a discreet approach for candid shots of people in the cafe, leaving your camera and 20-80mm zoom on the table in front of you and consulting its LiveView screen – if your camera has it – to see what’s in frame and what’s not. However, it’s often best to take a more upfront approach: you may find people are willing to pose if you ask them nicely and promise to email them a JPEG.

Try a wide-angle zoom of 18-35mm for a punchy in-your-face composition, getting close to your subject to fill the frame. Standing back with a wide-angle will also allow you to keep a sense of context in the composition too: if your portrait subject is selling the fish he’s caught that morning, then use their ice-packed bodies as colourful foreground interest.

In truth, despite its atmosphere of faded decadence and easy thrills, all set against the stark backdrop of the wintry grey ocean, the British seaside is at its best at this time of year – at least where photography is concerned.

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