‘Costa del Portsmouth’: our aerial photos of crystal-clear coast make national news
We’ve recently been capturing a locked-down Portsmouth from above for our ‘A Difference Perspective’ fundraiser, and our aerial shots of the crystal-clear waters around our island — made ‘tropical’ by a reduction in ships churning up silt — have been featured by national news publications!
Posts by the likes of LADbible, Bored Panda, Mirror Online, and The Daily Mail have been written around the bird’s-eye pictures.
We have no control over the editorial, unfortunately! Some of the publications attribute the water’s clarity to reduced vehicular pollution, which we’re not too sure about. A few things we are sure of:
Seeing the waters around Portsmouth and Southsea this clear is rare, but not a ‘COVID-19 exclusive’ — any significant reduction in shipping activity will cause the coastal tides to appear much less murky. We’ve most recently seen it during channel usage bottlenecks that were enacted to prepare the area for events like the America’s Cup and the arrival of HMS Queen Elizabeth
The ghostwriter of Jeremy Clarkson’s section in The Sun newspaper suggested the tropical colours are the result of a phone filter. A fun quip! In theory, that could explain the vibrancy, but not the deeper visibility that reveals subsurface structures and sea foliage
So what editing have we done on these photos? Very little — just a slight boost in clarity to better define the underwater foundations and seaweed. Otherwise, the impressive sharpness of our photos comes from an in-camera method known as ‘HDR’. Essentially, multiple photos are taken at varied exposures and instantly combined into a single picture. This brings out the detail and colour in dark shadows and bright solar reflections for a strong, balanced image
We’ve spotted a fair few comments questioning why Victoria Pier looks ‘destroyed’ in a few of the ‘before‘ pictures included in the publications’ stories. That’s just a glitchy render by Google’s 3D mapping! It’s essentially reading parts of the pier as-is, and other parts as the sea floor. Thus, a weird collapsed appearance. We’ve never seen Victoria Pier damaged! Small intricate structures like piers and marinas often look messy. Here’s another angle:
Elsewhere in The Sun, Karren Brady’s column gifted us the pun headline: ‘SO CLEAR, SO BLUE, SOLENT’.
Here are some more of our shots showing the inviting waters — they make us miss the beach big-time!
