DECEMBER 2023 · WATERLINE
Helios 44-2 vintage beach front
Worthing, West Sussex, England
Worthing has a long row of beach huts. They're black and white — painted that way, the contrast deliberate — and they run along the shingle in both directions with wooden boardwalks between them. In December there's no one there. The huts are closed, the boardwalks empty, the pebbles undisturbed.
I brought the Helios 44-2 because rows of repeating structures diminishing into the background are exactly the kind of subject its rendering suits. The bokeh softens the far end of the row into circles of light and dark. The huts in the foreground are sharp, their slatted wooden doors and black-and-white geometry clearly resolved. Three in a row: the distinction between the colours crisp in the December grey light. Then the row continues and the lens takes over.
The huts are closed, the boardwalks empty, the pebbles undisturbed.
Worthing Beach — December 2023
A kite surfer appeared in the water at some point in the afternoon. I got one frame of him with the kite fully deployed against a cloudy sky. His equipment was piled on the pebbles earlier — boards and lines and folded nylon — looking like the aftermath of something rather than the preparation.
The wooden boardwalks between the hut rows lead down to the water in straight lines over the shingle. The pebbles on either side pile up against the boardwalk edges. At the far end, a perspective view: the huts diminishing, the gap between them constant, the sea beyond flat and grey under overcast.
I find December seafronts more interesting than summer ones. Everyone who's there in December is there because they want to be there.
The final frame is the receding row, the far huts dissolving into soft circles, the boardwalk cutting a straight line through the shingle.
Kite equipment and boards scattered on pebbled Worthing Beach
Row of white and grey wooden beach huts stretching across pebbled shore
Close-up of beach huts with slatted wooden doors under overcast sky
Kite surfer in sea with kite deployed against cloudy sky at Worthing
Three wooden beach huts with distinct black and white colour scheme
Receding row of beach huts diminishing into distance across pebbles
Wooden boardwalk between pebbled banks leading towards beach huts