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.
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.
St. Huberts Church in Idsworth is another place in my list of sites to re-visit. This list if growing all the time! Anyway, the church is the perfect subject for star trail photos as it is on the top of a hill and it is in a relatively dark area as far as light pollution goes. There is still enough to ruin a long shot but it is much easier to control that down near where I live.
This shot was composed with the intention of having the star trails form a circle. This is done by having the North Star near to the centre of the frame and taking a long exposure photo. This photo was an exposure of about 30 minutes. There were 4 of us who went to this location and we all got fantastic results.
As you can see the light pollution did start to creep and in and try to ruin the shot but luckily it added a nice element to the composition.
A small amount of light painting with a flash gun was used to illuminate the front of the church.
The Lime Quarry in Petersfield is pretty much the epitome of night photography subjects. There are so many interesting abandoned old vehicles. There is a mechanics garage with many tools and vehicle parts all still there.
Being a lime quarry is has the kilns to bake the lime, these are still pretty much in-tact. There are diggers, dump trucks, wheel-barrow type contraptions and much more that I have forgotten about but are really worth a mention! There is so much there to photograph that since the initial visit I have returned to the site again. And hope to in the future as well!
First I will begin with some of the brilliant vintage vehicles that are sprawled across the quarry. These have all faced the test of time and are in a pretty bad way but I feel this definitely adds to the images.
That is just a small example of what the site has to offer, as you can see they make brilliant light painting subjects!
Moving on to other bits and bobs around the site.


This is a “pool” of vehicle parts in the pit. This is in the mechanics garage.
The coolest part of the quarry is a bit odd, but I am told it has an interesting past. There is a house awkwardly places right in the middle of the quarry. Apparently someone was living in the house before the quarry was even created and refused to budge when being offered a buy-out. It is understandable when you see the area.
The interior and exterior of the house are in very bad shape. A lot of the roof, windows and floorboards are missing. Making it a rather dangerous place to explore with expensive camera equipment. I feel it was well worth the risk.

That’s all for this update folks, much more can be seen if you visit the link below. Thanks for having a look.
Swanwick Wood in Southampton is cool. It is a man made nature reserve with multiple lakes and plenty of things to photograph. In the day anyway! And as any readers of the blog will know that is not what I like to do.
Anyway, I milked what I could out of the place but came away with 3 or so shots I could use.
This is the main lake located by the visitors centre.
As you travel further into the wood there is another lake with a large hillside, this is a relatively long exposure which I managed to capture a few star trails. As you can see one star really stood out for some reason.
This is something a bit different, usually I will just photograph still objects and things that are easy to take photos of (You know.. stuff that doesn’t move!). This is a self portrait. The lighting was acheived with a Canon 430EX on full power from behind me.
As usual all images can be clicked, this will take you to the flickr site where you have the option to view the images larger.
I didn’t take many photos here as once you’ve taken a photo of the bridge you are pretty much done! The sheer scale of this bridge is truly amazing when you are up close to it. The pictures really don’t show the true scale.
As you can see from the street lights that line the top of the bridge I was aiming for the “starburst” look. I achieved this by stopping down the aperture to f/11, a classic trick
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I took a couple more at Itchen Bridge. The set can be seen here.
More updates on the way in the near future! I have a bit of a backlog.