Photography areas in Dorset

[pwynn-mackenzie]

Hi there,
Im currently at uni in Plymouth but my hometown is Shaftesbury in North Dorset and when my long summer comes (which is now getting pretty close) I want to go and lots of photography. I have a car but dont want to really drive anymore than 45 minutes to get anywhere, an hour at most. Anyway a few places I am going for sure is Stonehenge (with hopefully star trails), Stourhead and Durdle Door but I was wondering if anybody had any great locations that i could pop of to .

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated thanks

 

[Top Cat]

Ooo. Where do I begin?

Bournemouth! Famous landmarks include:
a giant balloon in the summer!
ME!
Lots of bizarre neon lights at night.
Strange little mini parks, such as one leading from centre of town to Poole. It's where I go this:

that walk ultimately leads from the town centre to Coy Pond - another little spot.
Of course there is Bournemouth beach, and pier, and boscombe beach and pier!

It's nice to walk from one side of the beach to the other - and if you have a lot of stamina and food in supply - to walk the walk all the way to Christchurch - going along Hengisbury Head. Amazing scenery! I've always ran out of batteries on that walk.

Oh and Poole It's got a nice sea-side feel to it, and has a large Quay. From there I got this:

Further along there is:
Sandbanks!

Going even further than that, you can get a cool open top bus from the station all the way to Swanage:
On that bus I got this:

which connects to Studland (and its nudist beach ) via a train-ferry. Again, tons of photo opportunities.
Swanage itself is a proper stinky-seaweed sort of town. Bit commercial, but there's some more photo opportunities. I've been meaning to climb the white cliffs there myself and get a nice shot of the whole town.

List a few other locations:
Salisbury,
Corfe Castle
New Forest: you can spend up to a week taking photos over there. I recommend it if you love taking pictures of horses I came across loads I while hiking through it.

And then you have all the classic coastal landmarks like Harry's Rocks, Durdle Door, Jurassic coast ect.

 

[Bristolian]

You really are spoilt for choice ... some of my favourites are:

Durdle Dor
Lulworth Castle - bird of prey demonstrations and jousting
Lulworth Cove
Monkey World
Bovington tank museum
Portland
Chessil Beach

I'll be spending a week down that way too in the Summer

 

[pwynn-mackenzie]

Well thanks a lot for your input very helpful shall be making my way to some of those places for sure. Never photographed any of Dorset before but thats really because i have only been doing it for just over 2 months I also thought of Stourhead as another nice place, although you do have to pay £10 to get in But its pretty close to me

 

[Bristolian]

I was really disappointed with Stourhead from a photography stand-point .... lovely place to visit but not much to inspire me to grab the camera :|

 

[Top Cat]

I try to avoid paying to get into places for the intent of taking photos. I don't want to become that touristy photographer who carries a monopod, and photographs all the info-plaques.

Sides, it's probably photographed to death, or they're restricted to when and what you can photograph. :/ Coincidentally, I rarely go into museums.

Edit: in hindsight I just noticed that Stourhead is a giant park