Helen Stephenson's Dungeness and Lydd-on-Sea Pictures

Dungeness is located on the Kent coast not far from the Romney Marsh. There are quite a few buildings like this one, albeit not all as picturesque!

I thought that they were holiday shacks, but Heather Cole recently emailed me (9^th February, 2003) to put me right. Here's what she said:

They are not holiday shacks: for decades people have lived in them against all the elements and for nearly all that time they were only ever allowed to be sold to Fishermen/Dungenesss people. They are the homes of Dungeness people, and are all low; that is why they are always still standing after the terrible winds and gales the point gets.

Dungeness boasts two lighthouses. This is the old one, which is no longer in commission as a lighthouse, but is open to tourists. I have yet to visit at a time when it is actually open, though. The cloudy picture on the left is a spring time picture, while the one on the right boasts a winter blue sky.

I have to admit that my favourite picture is the one below: the dark grey clouds behind the lighthouse bring home its original purpose much more strongly than any amount of brilliant blue sky in the background can do.

Here is the new lighthouse. The photograph on the left was taken from some distance away with a long lens, while the one on the right was taken from quite close with a very wide angle lens. Some would consider the darkening of the sky to be a fault, but I rather like the effect.

On the left is the detail of the light, while on the right I have had a little play with some image manipulation software and turned a backlit photograph into a silhouette.

This boat is beached on the Lydd-on-Sea side of the peninsula. It was taken on a visit to Dungeness in 1999, and has inspired me to go back time and time again. This picture did well in the Bromley Camera Club 1999/2000 season, where it scored a "10" in club competition, and was subsequently hung in the Annual Exhibition in the spring of 2000.

After I took the previous picture, I thought that I could do better if I returned later in the day, as I wanted the sun on the right side of the boat. What I discovered was that during most of the year, the sun sets before it gets around to that side of the boat. I played around with my super wide angle zoom lens (a Centon 18-28) and came up with this picture when I realised that the sun was never going to give me the shot I wanted during the winter.

I finally managed to visit on a sunny summer's day and stayed until the evening to get the shot I wanted, which is reproduced below. I discovered that in summer time, plants grow among the shingles, so you don't get quite the nice clean line of shingle beach that you get in the winter, but I'm quite pleased with this shot anyway. Note that some time between 1999 and 2001, the wheelhouse of the boat has been boarded up!

While wandering around on the shingles looking for a good angle to photograph the boat from, I came across a ripped-up old tyre and a tangle of rope and fishing line, which I thought might make interesting shots. When the tide went out, I also had a look among the pools left by the retreating tide and found various bits of flotsam left by the retreating tide. Here are the tyre, the rope, and the best bit of flotsam.

Having sat and looked at the rope picture for a while, I decided that the fishing line was too white and had lost definition, so I had another go at it in my scanner. Here's the mkII result.