Saturday, April 21, 2007

Dungeness Beach #1


Over the years I have often photographed at Dungeness Beach, this strange, "other-worldly" place of shingle, fishing boats abandoned, old and new and fisherman's huts. There's still a small smoke house on the road that leads down to the light house.
Most famously the late Derek Jarman's weather boarded house, complete with sculptures of "found" beach objects draws the knowing visitor.
The Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Narrow Gauge Railway terminates at its end, a peculiarly English tea shop awaits the day trippers with cups of tea and cake.
I spotted this particular old boat, sitting alongside unlikely looking railway tracks, the railway tracks were used to move things up and down the beach I guess.
It wasn't an ideal day to make photographs, I try to avoid bright sun and cloudless sky or if I am forced then choose a time later in the day when the sun is lower and try to exclude as much of the sky as possible.
For those that are interested I used my Olympus OM1n camera with its OM 28mm lens for this photograph, the film was Fuji Neopan 400 and I developed it in good old faithful ID 11 diluted 1+1
I managed to get a whole afternoon and evening in the darkroom last weekend and rattled through a few of these shots, I also found negatives from the early 1990s of Dungeness Beach that I will reprint for posting.