Big shoot day

I decide that I would dedicate the day to photography. First I would go to Hastings and then onwards towards Rye, stopping off at Winchelsea to photograph the old church there. Hopefully arriving at Rye late afternoon so I could shot the day / night shots and returning to Hastings to shot the night shots there. I ran through a check list of things to take:- camera, spare batteries, tripod, sprit level, chalk. I arrived at Hastings around 11am and headed to the sea front. I stood across from the arcades and did 360º look round to see where would be the best place to photograph the arcade. Soon frustration would set in I could not find a place which gave me a good 360º. Either there was a lamp post was in the way, a building was to close, some kind of construction work going on with skips in the way.

X intended position Hasting

 

I then moved on to see if I could find an area with a good balance between the house on the hills and building near the sea. After walking around for an hour I chanced upon an area where the fishing boat are kept while they are not at sea. For me one of the key factors of a panoramic image is it has to be interesting for 360º, not just 180º.

Fishing fleet position X

I look round and found a place to shoot, as before set tripod level and set the exposure on the camera. I use the auto focus on the first shot these days, it sometime better than me doing it manually and the lock the focus for the rest of the pictures. I take 20 or so images and if I think I have not taken a shot I will shot a spare. It is best cover your self why you are there. After doing a complete panoramic there I move a couple of hundred meters away and found a second location to shoot, still basically the same image but with different objects in the foreground.

Now it was time to move on to Winchelsea, it’s a little hamlet between Hastings and Rye where there is an old half finished church. Parked up and carried the tripod and camera to the church grounds.

Winchelsea photography at X

I had the place to my self except for a lady with a dog. I was going to photograph from the path in the church grounds but the sun was now getting low on the horizon and for some of the panoramic it would shinning directly in to the camera lens. I need to shade the lens from the sun so I placed my self in the shadow of a big tree and proceeded to set up as before. I did a couple of 360º passes move as before to get another perspective and shot a second set of images. Time to move on to Rye.

 

Rye is another old and picturesque town with cobbled street, castle and lots of old buildings. I headed toward St Mary’s the church on the top of the hill. Looking all the while a suitable location, being old and full of small buildings I was finding it increasingly harder to find a location with out dense trees or buildings to near.

X intended position Rye

 On the other side of the church I found a space where on one side is the church and on the other is a small castle and a view of the estuary. It seemed perfect with a good mix of thing that could work with the day night theme. I set the tripod up and made it level, did my exposures with the camera and started. As soon as I had gone round 180º from the church my starting point the castle was falling over. Checked everything leveled up the castle and started again. Another 180º now the church was falling over. I rechecked the level and tried again. I must have spent a good hour messing around finally only to give up on the day night idea and photographs of Rye. I felt at the end I had had a bad day until I saw the pictures from Hastings and Winchelsea. For me they both set of pictures worked well as panoramas which was the object of the brief, but not well for what I had set out to shoot.