Sunrise at Hengistbury Head (...and a bit of afternoon too)

It's been a while since I dragged myself out of bed stupidly early to go out with a camera and tripod and photograph something, but it's such a beautiful time of day and it's getting slightly more sensibly timed so I decided to this morning.  Sunrise was at 0615, so I set my alarm for 0500 and got going very quickly (without even a cup of coffee!), driving from home to Hengistbury Head.

Hengistbury Head Beach Huts

Hengistbury Head is a sandstone headland that juts into the English Channel on the most easterly part of the borough of Bournemouth in Dorset, England.  It has history which spans through the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, and is an interesting and distinct landmass, great for photography!  You can find out more about it here (Wikipedia) and here (Hengistbury Head website).

In order to be successful in a sunrise shoot, its best to have everything prepared.  I had gone to the location the day before in the afternoon to have a look around at parking, best places to shoot from etc, and checked the sunrise time (I've mentioned this brilliant tool before: http://photoephemeris.com/).  I had my bag packed with cleaned filters, lenses, charged batteries, empty memory cards, and left the tripod already in the boot of the car.  For landscape work, I use the 5D mark 2 and today I took the 17-40L and the 24-70L just in case there were any longer focal length shots to capture.

I arrived in the car park around 0545 - 30 minutes before sunrise.  I had walking boots, a thin jacket and a fairly thick coat and gloves - I put them all on as it felt fairly cold and it was as well I did as even though it's August, it still would have been very uncomfortable without.  It's worth leaving stuff like that in the car - I've got a rain coat, gloves, wellies (in case I decide to wade into a river or the sea) which stay in there all year round.

I had decided to walk to the beach and then along the front of the headland by the sea.  In hindsight, I probably should have gone over the headland as you couldn't see much of the lightening part of the sky until nearly at the end of the beach area.  Although it doesn't look far, trying to rush through about half a mile of soft sand and pebbles with a fairly heavy tripod and camera bag is quite exhausting!

Once I got to the end of the headland, it was about 5 minutes before sunrise and I took some shots from various points on the sand and groynes, some direct exposures starting with the 0.3ND grad (1 stop), and some bracketed shots for a play around with HDR.  This first shot below was a few minutes before the sun broke the horizon, and is a 3 exposure HDR:

Just Before Sunrise (HDR)

It was beautiful watching the sun actually rise.  First, you see a tiny speck of bright orange peeking over the horizon, and within about a minute it's mostly up.  The sky and reflections are so dynamic at this point a shot can appear and disappear in seconds, so you have to both move quickly and remember what to do for next time (if there is a next time!).

Into the Water at Hengistbury Head

Once the sun rose, I swapped to the 0.6 ND grad, and quickly found that it wasn't enough for anything with the sun in.  Going a bit over the top, I stuck the 0.9 grad on the front of the holder, making a total of 5 stops at the top of the frame!

Groyne at Sunrise

Moments after Sunrise

The shot below was shortly after sunrise - I wanted to capture the green of the algae on the rocks contrasting against the orange and blue of the sky.

Standing Tall

I took some more shots around the beach as the sun continued to rise.  The shot of the beach huts below was carefully composed to block out the boats, tables, bits of car and rubbish just the other side of the dune!

Beach Huts at Sunrise

And I noticed this wind break on the beach just as I was leaving.  Again, it's quite a deliberate composition to miss out a bin to the right and an ugly post of some kind to the left.  I took 3 exposures of this and again processed as HDR.  While it has potential, I'm a little disappointed by the bright orange highlight on the left side of the break.  Maybe a polarising filter would have helped?  I'm not sure I could have got a decent shot from a location that didn't capture the bright reflection without getting something unwanted in the picture...

Morning Light on a Windbreak (HDR)

By this time, I'd finished down on the beach and started heading back.  I went up the steps to walk over the headland this time, partly to see whether it was worth coming back this way next time, and also for a different set of views on the way back.  The top of the headland is either one large or a set of smaller nature reserves, and there is some beautifully colourful heather covering the ground.  The shot below shows the heather, and one of the groynes I'd walked past earlier in the distance down at sea level:

Hengistbury Heather

There is also a disused coastguard station on top of the headland - it's all boarded up and obviously not used, but the antenna's are still on the mast, and the building is not too shabby.  I thought this must have been shot a million times, so I went for something a little more abstract, which also gets the moon in the shot (not very clear, but it's just to the right of the mast, almost in the centre of the shot):

The Old Lifeguard Station - Hengistbury Head

And a final shot from the morning - the view down towards Bournemouth and Sandbanks.  The sun was rising behind the shot and to the right, so the near part of sand is in the shadow of the headland.  The sun is starting to catch the beach further down towards Boscombe and Bournemouth:

Bournemouth Sunrise from Hengistbury Head

The Day Before

I had the idea of visiting Hengistbury Head for a sunrise shoot a few days ago, and on Bank Holiday Monday we were looking for somewhere to go in the afternoon for a few hours out to amuse the kids so we headed out there.  It was a nice opportunity to see what was about for the next day, but it led to a few photo opportunities as well.

I found some long grasses, some of which were covered in ladybirds, so focussing on one of these I captured the headland in the background out of focus:

Ladybird and Hengistbury Head

This is my son with a single line micro kite of a Sopwith Camel!  It wasn't really windy enough for a small kite like this but we did manage to get it to fly for a few seconds at a time and I managed to catch this one shot of him flying it:

Flying the Sopwith Camel

And finally, the kids were playing down by the water when the waves started getting really big periodically.  I think it was constructive interference caused by the tide coming in and the gradient of the beach, but every couple of minutes the water level would drop drastically near the beach and the next wave would rise into a wall.  This dog was really enjoying barking at the sea then running away when the waves came in, and I managed to catch one of the larger wall-like waves (it was much better a few minutes before but I wasn't near enough to get a decent shot):

Dog vs The Sea

So, a good morning shoot I think.  Nothing spectacular, but it was almost a reckee to determine where to go for the next opportunity.  I think a little more cloud in the sky, or maybe some sea mist would liven things up to make a more interesting set of images, but I enjoyed the morning nonetheless.  Now, I'm off to bed as I've been up since 5am!!