I recently visited South Parade Pier, Southsea with my good friend, Dan. Instead of taking the normal route of taking photos of the pier by going on it, we headed straight for the rusty and grotty underside. The rough sea was going to make it both a challenge and add an interesting element to the photos.
Shot from underneath South Parade Peir, showing the waves moving. Creating a smooth blur.
Fire Hyrant on South Parade Pier
The unseen side of the pier. As seen looking North.
After my recent visit to HMS Mercury and getting a relatively good star trail photo and the long string of clear nights at the time, I decided to have a go at some more star trails. This time was at Royal Victoria Country Park.
The obvious and obligatory subject would, of course be the remains of the old military hospital. The tall spire-like structure that stands tall above the park makes it perfect for playing around with North Star placement so the stars rotate around, creating a more dynamic image.
Also, while in the area a visit to the Military Graveyard made sense. My favourite image from there would have to be the one that was created by accident. I set the camera up on the tripod, tilted at a 45 degree angle. As usual, I started the exposure and began to light the area I was photographing with my flash gun. Half way through the exposure the camera started to rotate back round to the normal 90 degree position. This made for quite an unusual and interesting effect.
No photoshop to create that effect! A pure accident.
Star trails are what I was after when visiting here. Mainly due to the fact their is little light pollution here and most places around the Petersfield area. I only came away with one photo that I could use, but I think it was good enough to make the trip worth it.
HMS Mercury is now completely abandoned, and the road it’s on is very quiet. The road is also un-lit. This makes it the perfect venue to experiment with super-long exposures and star trails. To find out more about the history of HMS Mercury, visit the Wikipedia page on HMS Mercury.
Here’s the image I came away with:
As part of the weekly Portsmouth at Night Flickr group meet, we visited Warblington Church, Near Emsworth.
The skies were relatively clear with a few groups of cloud dotted around, perfect conditions for this sort of location.
As you can see here, the apparent light pollution that plagues the area really did compliment the result.
One of the memorials in the cemetary.
Taken a while ago now, at Bracklesham Bay in West Sussex. Just thought I’d put this up to keep things looking a bit more fresh on this blog.