I was going to call this 'On the Edge' until I saw Daniel had an essay with that name, so it's just a very unimaginitive 'East Sussex Coast'.
'On the Edge' would have been in reference to Fay Godwin's book 'Edge of the Land'. She lived for some time along the East Sussex coast and some of her photographs of the area are in the book. It was these photographs that prompted me to take the opportunity to spend some time in the area when I recently got the chance. I was staying in Hastings. I don't remember ever seeing any Godwin photographs of Hastings so I haven't included the ones I took in this essay but have just included photographs from Pett level, Rye and Camber Sands. All these photogaphs were taken in one day. I started at Pett Level, went further along the coast then back to Pett Level as the first time I was there the tide was out and I wanted to try and get some photographs with the sea around the groins. Always worth checking the tide tables if photographing along the coast.
The coast in this area isn't particularly full of features. It's mainly fairly flat ground, a shingle/pebble beach, some groins and not much else. The groins featured in Godwin's photographs and they were a particular attraction to me, especially the ones at Pett level which are very worn and weathered. I had no plans to try to recreate or in any way emulate Godwin's photographs. I went with an open mind and was prepared to photograph whatever I saw. One thing which did influence me though was the recent aquisition of a 80mm f/1.9 lens for my Mamiya 645 system so many of the images I took feature a shallow depth of field. Unfortunately, as I discovered later, the camera has a small focussing error and, with such a shallow dof, some photographs were unusable. I used a mixture of colour and monochrome, more through indicision than anything else. I was tempted to convert the colour to monochrome for consistancy but decided to leave them as is. If I was going to do this again, I would probably use more colour.
Pett Level
Rye Harbour
Camber Sands
