My next shoot i decided to create was a beach den as this was the most common den i made as a child. I spent pretty much my entire childhood down the beach building dens so it was really important that i included a beach den within my project. I decided to use St Brelade’s beach as we had a spot up by where the boats are parked that we would always go to. This was key in inspiring our beach dens. The boats and tractor trailers provided a basic structure to began to build our dens coming off the sides of them. Otherwise down other beaches such as St Ouen’s we struggled to have a starting point to build the dens off. I have mentioned previously how important it was in den building to consider the environment and to find the perfect part of the location where you had a starting point. I thought it was therefore really important to build a den in this location.
For my beach shoot i didn’t really want to take my photographs on a sterotypical sunny day. I wanted to get a different atmosphere to the photographs rather then just sunshine. The most memorable dens on the beach where the ones when there was weird weather or i used something slightly different to build the dens. As we have been having so much fog recently i thought it could be quite interesting to create a den on a day which was really foggy. It actually turned out that i got the best of both worlds as the day i choose to take the photographs was a sunny day and also very foggy as it rolled in as i was taking the photographs.
When choosing what materials to use to build my den i wanted to use those that i would have used at the time to build dens. I therefore thinking about the basics of the structure decided to bring a wind brake to act as a wall. Down beaches where we had very limited places to build dens as there was no beginning point to the structure we would always use wind brakes to create walls and then drap material off them. The material i decided to use were sarongs as these were the things i used down the beach as a child to lye on and to dry ourselves after swimming. They were the best blankets to use as they are very light weight and can be folded up small so many could be taken with us down the beach and then used for various things. I have also decided instead of pegs like i used in my garden den i will use rocks to weight down the blankets as they are a material that is readily available down the beach.
Below is the location in which i have decided to build my den. I wanted to choose a part of the location which conveyed that the den was built down the beach but without the photographs appearing like a sterotypical beach photograph. I therefore decided to take the photograph looking back towards the less extensive side of the beach. I had to take the photograph at the end of the line of tractors and boats in order to have enough room to take the photographs from far enough away from the den.
