Location : The St Helens Fort, it is a sea fort in the Solent close to the Isle of Wight.

It was built between 1867 and 1880 as a result of the Royal Commission to protect the St Helens anchorage. The Solent Forts- often known as "Palmerston's Follies" were built in response to a French invasion scare under Louis Napoleon III. This came to nothing with the defeat of France by Prussia in 1870-71 (before they were even finished building them)!

The fort is now in private hands and is not open to the public. It was offered for sale in 2003. A yearly event often in August, staged on one of the lowest tides of the year, is a mass walk from St Helens beach out to the fort and back. On these days a causeway just appears from the sea upon which almost 2000 participants paddle or wade out and round the fort. This event is entirely spontaneous (not organised because of all the liabilities concerned). I really enjoyed going out myself on the one in August and hope to do so again next year!

This image was captured just before sunrise, about 7:23am on a bright morning. I was using a Panasonic Lumix G7 with a Lumix G Vario 35-100 f/2.8 lens set to 66mm (equivalent to 132mm on full frame camera). The camera was on a tripod and I used autofocus on the fort. The camera was set to Aperture priority f/6.3 giving a 1/80th of a second exposure at ISO 200 with daylight white balance. The RAW processing and final adjustments were all done in Photoshop CC.

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