For photographers in the south east of England shots of the remains of Brighton West Pier are classic images. However for me this was the first time I got round to it. The shot was taken on the 12 March this year. The weather was ideal with mist out to sea even nearing sunset. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of Photographers with Tripods lining the shoreline and I got this shot with somebody else standing alongside me on the ramp.

A Tourist from California asked me what the structure out at sea was and he thought it pretty cool that it was the remains of a Pier. It was opened in 1866 and closed in 1975 and fell into disrepair. This was followed by a succession of storms and 2 fires which left it in its present sorry state though a gift for photographers. The latest storm to bring down part of it was in 2014.

The pictures was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 20mm. Taken with a tripod. The picture was first processed in RAW. More overall detail was brought in using Topaz Clarity. The mono conversion was done with Topaz B&W Effects. The minus 2 EV image I had also taken was brought in as a new layer with a mask and a brush used to bring it in to darken some areas especially on the right where the sea lacked detail due to the setting sun being off screen to the right. Photoshop was used to darken the sky with a linear gradient top to bottom.