Harwich
For this project I wanted to shoot beachscapes at another beach than Scheveningen – just for a day – so I boarded at Hoek van Holland to Harwich, where I would step off the ferry and on the island at 6.30 to explore the beaches of Felixstowe and Dovercourt, and to return at 23.15. Sunday would be nice weather though, with sun and clouds, that’s why.
Picture from smoker’s-deck
Breakfast I had planned for later in the morning at the old Harwich harbor, on the Halfpenny Pier to be specific. It’s a nice site to shoot some pictures and breakfast costs 4 pounds. For that you’ll get bacon and eggs, tomatoes and beans with some toasts and ketchup. Much better and cheaper than the 12 pound breakfast on the big ferry-boat.
As the sun became brighter I mounted a pola-filter (CPL) both on the 28 and the 35mm lens to darken the skies and to use as them as a second grade Neutral Density (ND) because the ND-filters I have require a substantial amount of White Balance-correction. Now if you want to use a pola-filter on an intelligent digital camera, you must work off-auto for what shutter-speed and ISO settings concerned. Only in manual exposure-mode the pola shows its effects. As you can see my skies are quite dark here, and that’s also because of the Monochrome Red filter-filmsimulation of the Fuji X. I suppose Fuji implemented a digital red-filter because the exposure calculations in Automatic-mode makes it impossible to see any effect of analogue physical filters. I used both on these pics, so you can see the results.
Halfpenny Pier
The first foot-ferry to Felixstowe leaves at 10.15 on Sundays. That’s why I visited Dovercourt earlier. The small ferry lands on a beach just near the container-harbor, and it takes a 2 miles walk to reach Felixstowe. On the way you pass the Landguard Fort of Felixstowe. It’s a five cornered bastion with guns and battery’s.
Landguard Fort of Felixstowe
This baby is almost two meters high and approximately four meters long, so I used the panorama mode here.
Felixstowe
Because the last trip of the foot-ferry back to Harwich leaves at 16.35 it leaves me plenty of time to go back to Dovercourt again and see if the evening sun which comes from land-side now, will give any other scenes on the lighthouses. On several pics I have adjusted the Dynamic Range on 400% (only on high ISO) and set the Shadow-tone on +1 or 2 to brighten up the shadow-parts because of the CPL filter. This way I could compensate without loosing the effect of the filter in Automatic-modes.
Dovercourt
The rest of the evening I spent at the Alma Inn, where they serve proper dishes and many beers for good rates. Boat ships at 23.15!
Alma Inn
Keep you updated soon!
