FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY AT OSEA BEACH HUTS
I have seen a few videos of this location online from other photographers and finally decided to head off up to Maldon to photograph the beach huts at Osea leisure park. I had done some research about the weather, tide times and parking locations before i set off on the two hour trip to the location. I actually called Osea leisure park and asked for permission to use their car park while i was photographing this location. The lady on the telephone could not of been more helpful , allowing me to use the car park and the site facilities while i was there.
I packed up my gear and headed off up the motorway , through the Dartford tunnel and headed east to Maldon . I arrived just over two hours later at the car park and headed into reception where i spoke to the same lady and made her aware of my arrival and the car in their car park. After a change of footwear i grabbed my gear and headed off through the caravan park towards the seafront , up the stairs past the site cafe and straight away the beach huts came into view.
I thought i had given myself plenty of time but it quickly became apparent that the tide was coming in fast and i would need to move quickly if i wanted to capture some images from beach level.
I quickly got out my three legged thing Winston tripod and extended just the lower leg section, this would remain extended now until I got home so as to wash away any sand and salt water without it getting into any of the locking mechanisms. I decided to try and shoot a single hut looking square on out to see. This proved trickier than anticipated as the low sun this time of year, was reflecting brightly off the incoming tide.
I think i managed a half decent image here but have to admit i was feeling rushed and in hindsight i wish i had set off from home a little earlier than i did. I wish i had got the filters out here and slowed the shutter to smooth out that sea even a little may of helped a little.
The next composition is probably the most photographed image of the beach huts, and for good reason. Its a nice balanced composition with the beach huts leading off into a bit of a vanishing point.
The image to the left is the main composition i came for, however the tide was still not at its highest point so i decided to wait a little longer.
I am pleased i did as the 5.39 meter tide still had some way to go before it was at its highest point, which turned out to be around five steps from the outside balcony.
Ok, now we are getting closer to the image i had in mind. As you can see here the tide has come in and surrounded the huts which covered almost all the grasses that were still visible in the image above.
With a little bit of photoshop magic the remaining grasses had been removed as had the land on the horizon, the composition was slightly different so as to illuminate the promenade on the right of frame.
The image below is the shot of the day, in my opinion. I took this from the promenade level, i used a Lee Big Stopper, a Lee three stop soft Grad and a Lee circular polarizer to capture this. Again a fair amount of photoshop work went into this to remove and distractions and give a more minimal fine art style to the resulting image. Removed the horizon and had to blend and colour match the sea and sky to help blend the horizon better.
The final image was taken around thirty to forty minutes after high tide, so this tide really comes in and goes out really quickly.
If your ever wanting to come do this yourself look for tides over five meters and get there a couple of hours before high tide itself.
Hope you enjoyed the images any questions , please leave a comment and if you would like to see the video of how i captured the images then head over to my YouTube channel and watch the vlog
