A few weeks ago a photographer friend asked if I wanted to join him for a days photography in Southend. Now I know what you are thinking, I thought the same... Southend?? So I set about researching locations and to my surprise found Southend to be a treasure trove of locations for long exposure photography with a whole host of piers, wooden jetties, slipways, sea defences and various strange remains of who knows what... I was getting rather excited about this trip.

The day itself turned out to be less than ideal freezing cold with heavy cloud but we carried on and used it as a scouting trip for future reference. In the end I got enough keepers to inspire me to write this blog and we were also rewarded by seeing an unexpected amount of wildlife including common seals, red throated divers, kittiwakes and guillemots at the end of the pier. On the subject of sea birds, I took several exposures of three minutes or more which had pretty sharply rendered gulls in them... I'd never noticed how much time gulls spend sitting around!

So the day in freezing Southend was a success, just goes to show that scratch the surface and you'll find photographic interest in the unlikeliest of places.