Photos from the Wetlands and Harbour Walk at Fishbourne Meadows
In early spring we headed down to a real favourite location: Fishbourne Meadows. This area is famous for it’s history back to the Romans (the Roman Palace is epic) and it is at the northern edge of a channel of Chichester Harbour, a fantastic wetlands habitat.
We started off meeting up at the old mill pond and used this location to get our cameras out, basic settings and just creatively warming ourselves up. It is always awesome to see people shooting film but this walk was unique as we had not only one film medium format camera, but two! The weeping willow tree makes for many interesting compositions to experiment with as were the water birds curiously coming over to say hello. The old school house is a fascinating building next to the pond and over the years of running photo walks here it is great to see it go from almost dereliction to now being a restored home. From here we headed off to the wetlands area, which is an incredible path leading through the high reeds over the mud channels. We began by looking at leading lines using the ‘walls’ of the reedbeds to guide the eye, then incorporated the puddles to add a low angle reflection. The reeds themselves also are awesome to explore with details shots, shallow depth of field layers of the moving reeds in the breeze, plus views through to the water channels.
At the far side of this area we walked up to the field which is home to a beautiful lone tree that captures your attention and often features in the background of landscape photography in this corner of West Sussex. We found some tree blossom by the path and discussed macro photography and experimented with our phone lenses. From this location we looked back to the old mill and were blown away by the dramatic sky, dark with rainclouds. Thankfully despite them lurking throughout the whole walk we enjoyed the sun and had no rain.
We retraced our steps to the pond and then headed along the stream to the water meadows, looking at the little bridges and flowing water before going through the gate to the shoreline. You can often see cows grazing in this meadow and even orchids at the right time of year. This harbour area past the gate is prone to flooding but the low tide (and appropriate footwear) meant we could explore the shore and along the spur of land that juts south in to the channel. From here the members of the walk with long lenses got great photos of wildlife and we were careful not to disturb the birds or damage the habitat. At this point we all went off to explore more with our cameras and I was happy to pick up any questions along the way or offer support and troubleshoot. We finished up with the traditional group photo, sharing of Instagram accounts and big smiles. A big thank you to everyone who came along!
You can see my photos below plus photos from participant Alan Frew HERE too.
New walkshops dates up soon!
