I ran this Landscape Photography Workshop with the Royal Photographic Society at Cuckmere Haven and the Seven Sisters recently. A relatively mild December morning greeted us when we arrived and, though we didn’t quite get a glorious sunrise like the last time I visited, the conditions were good for controlling exposure and experimenting with longer exposures using neutral density filters. Both exposures here that show the Seven Sisters rising from the beach at Cuckmere Haven used an exposure of around 30 seconds to smooth out the water and some of the cloud movement, giving a sense of timelessness and calm to these images. I rarely shoot in black and white, but with this vertical composition (below), it felt right to remove the colour information and concentrate on the contrast of tones between the wooden posts and smooth water.
Our next stop was at High and Over, to briefly show the participants the views over the Cuckmere valley, but we didn’t spend long here, as it looks much better with lots of light on the valley in the early morning like this previous shoot. So we quickly moved on to Birling Gap, for some light refreshment at the cafe and some shots of the Seven Sisters from the other side. The tide had gotten lower, so some of us ventured out into the lower section of the beach, concentrating on the rocks in the foreground and using long exposures to blur the movement of the incoming waves.
Beachy Head Landscape Photography
Our final stop was at Beachy Head for some shots from the cliff tops of the renowned light house. Some light started to break in golden hour as the sun shone through the gap in the clouds. The beam of sunlight on the light house made for a dramatic atmosphere for the final shots.
To book a landscape photography workshop with the Royal Photographic Society, visit their website here: https://rps.org/what-s-on/
