After more than two years and an awful lot of standing in the sea, I’ve finally accumulated twelve images in my “End of the Pier” project. It’s not finished of course, the weather and the rust will decide that, but it finally feels like it’s at a stage where I’m thinking of it as a project, and something I may as well see through to the end. It didn’t start like this, I had no intention of starting a project, I just wanted to get an interesting image once the ballroom section had been taken away. It left such a huge space on the beach where I had only ever known there to be some sort of pier gubbins. After a few attempts it became a moderate obsession and now I feel kind of obliged to keep at it.
These days I tend to head down on the lowest tides to see how its looking, and if the light and the weather are playing ball, I’ll try and get another one for the set. For each successful image (defined by some spurious self imposed rules about the light, the time of day, calmness of sea etc) there are loads that just haven’t worked, which makes the cold feet and odd looks a little harder to deal with. Currently I’m averaging six per year, and I reckon its got a few years left in it yet. I’m well aware that photographing the West Pier is about the most clichéd thing to do here, but I’ve started so I’ll finish.
