South West Safari

The jolly jaunt to Dorset and Devon was an interesting trip; the weather was mixed - thick sea fog and strongish winds on day one, wall-to-wall sunshine on day two, a bit of a mixed bag on the first day in Devon and almost a complete washout on Lundy Island! The return run on the Sunday saw glorious weather until I stopped off at the Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge at which point the Heaven's opened. Oh, the joys of being an outdoor photographer.

However, despite everything I managed to bag a few decent pictures and a few are presented below. I hope you enjoy them.

Firstly, a foggy picture, which was processed for my Fotoblur portfolio...

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The bed and breakfast I used in Dorset was Chiltern Lodge in Worth Matravers, run by photographer, David and Ann Ensor, and he kindly offered to turn out with me on a dawn shoot. We went to Old Harry Rocks and were greeted with a lovely sunrise...

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On the Jurassic Coast proper I walked from Lulworth Cove to Bats Hole and back on a gloriously sunny day...

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Click the image for the bigger picture

I can heartily recommend David and Ann's b&b - comfortable beds, good breakfast, lots of ideas from David about photo locations, very obliging and homely. Here's a link to Chiltern Lodge and to David's travel photography web site:

Chiltern Lodge, Worth Matravers

David's photography pages

They get excellent reviews on Trip Advisor, too.

Before moving on to Devon I made a few images in Dorset. Firstly, The lovely St. Andrew's church in Church Knowle and then Corfe Castle:

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Click the image for the bigger picture

Moving into Devon I met my friend, Simon, and after a wander around Hay Tor on Dartmoor we travelled north to Westward Ho! where a decent sunset greeted us:

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This sunset was published on Fotoblur and earned me a 'Featured Image' award.

Despite the mixed weather I had an excellent break learning much about my Lee Filters and a newly acquired circular polariser, which I have found to be invaluable.

Thanks to David and Ann for their hospitality and to my good friend Simon for the invite, my introduction to Dartmoor and Lundy Island. I WILL be going back!

The Roll of the Sea*

The west coast of Anglesey has figured large in my recent travels. The glorious Spring weather in the UK have provided many wonderful opportunities and, occasionally, let me dow, too. At this time of year Cable Bay, Tywyn Fferam and Rhosneiger provide stunning sunsets. The first image promised much but fizzled out as the sun dropped towards the horizon and into a bank of sea fog.

This is another early experiment with my small but very useful collection of Lee filters. I used a 0.6 soft grad here to darken the sky but leave the foreground correctly exposed. The shot has been manually metered taking readings from both the sky, sea and foreground to determine the best exposure and filter compensation.

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I make no apologies for returning to Tywyn Fferam on Easter Saturday when a real sunset presented itself! Aided and abetted by Lee filters and using the metering technique described above I captured this lovely sunset. To smooth the sea out I added my Lee 2.0 full ND thus reducing the amount of light reaching the sensor allowing slower shutter speeds to be used.

Publish PostClick the image for the bigger picture

*Easter by Marillion from the album 'Seasons End'

And I'll Show You a Sunset...*

Last Sunday was a damp, cold and dreary day in Anglesey and we set off for home a little earlier than usual. As is often the case in Wales almost as soon as we got onto the mainland the weather improved and we drove home in lovely sunshine deciding to make for West Kirby to see if a sunset might develop. 


The best laid plans... roadworks delayed us and the sun was almost on the horizon when we finally reached the Wirral but Parkgate was within easy reach so we headed for the salt marshes there. There had been a very high tide earlier in the day and the marshes were still flooded in places giving some lovely reflections of the sunset.


The perfect end to a lovely weekend...

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* Stay With Me Till Dawn by Judy Tzuke from the album of the same name.

The Photographers Ephemeris

I'm a sucker for sunsets, I really am and there's lots of places I'm getting to know where, given the right conditions, some spectacular ones can be seen. My current favourite locations are West Kirby on the Wirral peninsular and the west coast of Anglesey from Llanddwyn to Tywyn Fferam. There's lots of places to discover, too. I'm planning a trip to the Jurassic coast of Dorset, the north Devon coast and to see and photograph the wooden lighthouse at Burnham on Sea in Somerset probably in May.


One of the best tools I've found for planning such adventures is The Photographers Ephemeris. This little tool allows you to plot sunrise and sunset times for just about any location in the world. It's superbly accurate; I put it to the test a couple of weeks back on Anglesey when it plotted the sunrise at Beaumaris perfectly. There's two versions: a desktop one, which is free, and an iPhone app, which is £5.49 (UK). Once you've got a copy of the program or app start it up and search for a location. When it finds where you're after it drops a pin that can be moved to the optimum location. Yellow and blue 'beams' are projected showing the sunrise and sunset on the yellow axis and moonrise and set on the blue one complete with times. You can fix the date to any point in the year.


There's all sorts of other calculations such as elevation above sea level, azimuth and altitude of the sun or moon for any time of daylight and it will even find when the sun/moon will appear from behind a hill! It's invaluable for the landscape photographer. All I now need to complete my landscape kit is a nice set of Lee ND grad filters!


You can get TPE by clicking below:

http://photoephemeris.com/

To round off this post, here's a West Kirby sunset from last winter. As always, ACR5 was used to process the image before final tweaking in Elements and a 5x5 crop, a format I'm liking this more and more...

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Sailing Home

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Another Anglesey sunset... this one is a photograph from the original Menai Bridge looking west along the Straits. The sun had just dropped below the horizon when a small boat passed under the bridge and into view creating some lovely foreground interest.


Hand held for a change and very minor tweaking of the levels and saturation. 

Holiday Homes 2

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Anglesey... a late August sunset at Tywyn Fferam on the west coast of the island.

I'd only just arrived on the island for the weekend when this stunning sunset presented itself. A quick dash up the coast to another favourite location and the fastest setup ever to snatch a few shots from the headland overlooking the beach. No filters were used and just a tad of under exposure with the merest tweak of the saturation in Photoshop Elements.