Beached

I shot it with a Pentacon 50mm. The old lens suited the place — a direct match for working infrastructure that has its own age and logic.

The pebbles are grey-brown flint, the same colour as an October sky over the Channel. Rusted metal posts rise from the shingle further along, and behind them a wooden wreck submerged in shallow water — not a recent wreck, just something that ended up there and stayed. No fencing, no interpretation panel. The shoreline absorbs what's left on it.

Further up from the fishing boats, a row of white beach huts with coloured trim stands on the shingle. They're properly maintained — the paint is clean, the pitches of the roofs even. Privately owned, probably, by people who come in summer. In October they were closed, the whole row locked.

Behind them, the working beach continues. Another row of sailing boats in white with bright trim, lined up on the pebble with the grey sky behind them. Not the same as the fishing boats — these are leisure vessels, hauled up for winter storage. The two rows don't quite acknowledge each other.

The Pentacon gave the coiled rope and the hull paint the texture they deserved. Close up on the orange boat: the buoy white against the black bow, the rope's grey coils in tight focus, the pebble beach receding out of frame.