Sunrise Over Beachy Head | Weekly Photo #131
Fujifilm XT2 | XF18-55mm | 50mm | 1/1000th Second | f/9 | ISO200
Located on the far eastern edge of the South Downs in East Sussex, the cliffs at Beachy Head are pretty epic indeed. Well, epic for us here in the relatively flat southeast of England at least and standing as high as 162 metres (530 feet) tall, they are the highest chalk cliffs in England.
Back in March this year, I took a drive down to the coast in a bid to make my own version of this well-photographed composition of the Beachy Head cliffs and lighthouse. I had visited a few times before and knew my way around, so I headed straight to this spot, back up the hill towards Belle Tout which is the other, smaller lighthouse which sits on top of the cliffs rather than down at the water’s edge.
Arriving before sunrise and hopeful for a touch of colour, I found the sky over to the east covered in a thin layer of cloud but it was quite windy up there and the clouds were moving fast, so I remained hopeful for some nice light nonetheless. Bearing in mind how windy it was and how unstable the cliffs are known to be, I was careful to set the camera and tripod up a few metres away from the edge. It certainly looks like I’m closer in the photo but I did crop the photo a little and the foreground does open up a bit in front of me.
In terms of arranging the composition, it was pretty straightforward. With the tide out, I had both the coastline and the cliff’s edge providing some useful lines, leading the eye into the image towards Beachy Head Lighthouse which provides both a focal point and some much-needed scale into the image. With everything lined up and the clouds appearing to clear, all I needed was the sun to rise so it could cast some light across the landscape.
The pre-sunrise glow didn’t really amount to much. I mean it was pleasant enough with nice pastel colours, but as the clouds began to clear towards the east, I had a feeling the best light was yet to come. When the sun did rise, it still took a few minutes to reach the top and peek over the cliffs and as it did, the scene was fully engulfed by its beautiful warm light.
Dynamic range was the challenge here as the sun was now higher in the sky and a lot brighter. I wanted to retain some colour and detail in the clifftops and lighthouse and wasn’t looking for them to be silhouetted against the sun, so I needed the exposure to be bright enough to show the detail in those areas but not too bright that it left all of the sky over-exposed. Pushing my camera’s dynamic range capabilities as far as possible, I couldn’t avoid clipping the brightest area around the sun and with the settings you can see underneath the picture above dialled in, I took the shot.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.