St Margarets Bay Kent – Places to Photograph
In our series of posts on recommended places to photograph we are highlighting interesting locations for photographers. This post looks at St Margarets Bay in Kent on the south coast of England. This is a good location for seascapes.
St Margarets Bay is not far from Dover in Kent. So, not surprisingly, it features beautiful white cliffs. It is a pebble beach with breakers. There is a pretty good car park down by the beach which is accessed by a fairly steep narrow road. As it is a south facing beach, at the right times of year you can photograph sunrise or sunset along the coastline. The images featured here were taken at the end of September.
The cliffs and the breakers make good focal points, especially if you like long exposures. The advantage of a pebble beach for long exposures is that you get an almost misty effect swirling around the stones which can make the effect more interesting than on plain sand. Unless you are shooting in low light you will need ND filters to get long exposures. (Find out more about how to do long exposure photography here)
I was fortunate on the occasion we were there to get a lovely sunset. As with all landscape photography, the “golden hour” is an ideal time to shoot here. If you do shoot multiple images for HDR or a long exposure, just be aware that ferries do cross your scene. So, you may end up with ghost ships that need removing in Photoshop or Lightroom. Apparently St Margarets Bay has been used as the starting point for many attempts at swimming the channel. You may want to check there isn’t a big event going on when planning your visit.
For more abstract seascapes try using the breakers. Or, you can add background interest with the cliffs.
Do take a look at some of our other recommended places to photograph. If you would like to share one of your favourite locations in a guest post please do contact us.
© Joe Lenton, Jan 2018