BRIGHTON

It was that time of the year, time to visit the beach. I always make an annual trip to Brighton and this year was no different. Destination decided, I head over to trainline.com, find a return ticket for less than a tenner and that was the trip booked. I gather a few friends and Brighton is a go.

An hour later we reach Brighton and head straight over to the beachfront. A short walk later we make it to the beach where we were greeted by the salt filled sea breeze washing past our faces. I walk across the pebbles past all the beach goers realising how overdressed I am for a sunny day. I take my bag off, take a deep breath and fall to the ground. Although my initial plan for the trip was to take some seascapes and landscapes, once I got there I didn't have the energy to unpack and set up. So I did something better, sleep on the beach.

I had no intention of getting tanned so I had to take extra precautionary measures!

The gentle crashing of the waves resonates through the pebbles travelling up my back. The joy of sleeping on the beach cannot be described with words, it's an emotion to experience, so I'll skip that and save myself some keystrokes. 

Eventually we get up to explore the rest of the shore. We head over to the pier but not to go on the pier but rather to go under. I wanted to try out some long expos with the metal and wooden struts of the pier as my composition.

And some of the behind the scenes of me taking the above shots.

Then it was time to have some model shoots done. What's the fun in taking pictures of inanimate objects you can't make fun of. 

Another reason I love visiting the coast is for authentic fish and chips. We were all quite hungry so packed our bags and cluelessly walked around in the hope of stumbling across a good place to eat. It seems unlikely this technique will yield any results but this time it actually worked. The Fish Express has got to be one of the best restaurants to get proper fish and chips, especially the staff who are really friendly. 

As 'Golden Hour' was soon approaching we raced down to the seafront to catch the sunset and grab a few pictures.  

It's not very often the photographer is a made a subject of someone else's photo. Whilst I was in the waves capturing long exposures of the West Pier a lady approached me to ask what I was doing and then moved onto wanting a picture of me for her instagram. Being used to getting compliments on social media it was pleasant to have someone encourage you in person and follow your work. 

After the sun had set and the pictures collected we moved onto experimenting with steel wool. Lighting steel wool and spinning it within a whisk attached to a piece of string can yield spectacular results. Couldn't think of a safer place to try it out than by the beach with plenty of water if anything went wrong.

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LEARNING A LESSON!

As steel wool burns it can reach temperatures over 1000 degrees celsius which causes the steel to clump together into a very hot red mass. Unfortunately for me the steel squeezed through the whisk and landed on my top burning straight through into my skin. The picture on the right shows the path taken by the metal bouncing of my shoulder before landing on the ground. 

Who would've thought photography involves so much risk!

The short supply of steel wool finished which marked the end of the Brighton trip. We then packed everything up boarded our train and returned to London.