After quite a few grey days, the forecast for the next morning was great, so at 04:20 I set an alarm and went down to the harbour for some blue hour and sunrise photography. I was pleased to find the tide was out but there was still some water across the harbour. This meant that the boats were not afloat (and therefore liable to move on the water during long exposures), and the sunrise was a treat.
Over the past two weeks I’ve been down at my home in St Ives. Whilst it’s always great to be there, the summer is always full of tourists, and you can spot the locals by their rapid progress along Fore Street (the main shopping street), or along the harbour as they dash into secret short cuts and by pass as many dawdling holidaymakers (they are holiday so why not dawdle?) as possible. This year, the busy areas offer no opportunity to social distance, so my time was spent walking the coast path (more of that in another post), and seeking out places where people were likely to be fewer with more space to spread out.
With a promise of some good cloud cover (some high clouds, but limited coverage), and very little wind, the chance of a good sunset was promised down at Godrevy. I went early, picked a spot to shoot from, and waited. The sunset got better and better, and then after the sun dipped over the horizon, I waited for, what turned out to be quite a lightshow. I hope you enjoy.
We spent the weekend in Suffolk. We couldn’t get on a preferred campsite so we ended up in a budget hotel for a couple of nights. Yesterday I got up at 4am and headed to South Beach in Lowestoft for the sunrise. I was great to feel the sun on my face, the breeze in my hair and listen to the sea as it settled on the beach before retreating once again.
Since the beginning of lockdown, I have, over on Instagram, being posting a picture a day from my archive and occasional newly taken pictures. This is the 100th picture I posted. It’s sunrise over Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. Pre-dawn we had struck our campsite, packed up and drove the forty minutes to this point and set up gear. The sunrise was spectacular but the pictures not so much. When I got home,I ignored this image as lens flare as it’s not “allowed” in landscape photography but when I trawled back through my archiveI really liked this picture. There is something of the breaking day and the promise of everything clean and new and full of opportunity about it.
After 12 weeks of lockdown, we took my mum to Felixstowe for a couple of hours on a glorious day. I managed to grab a few pictures of one of my favourite subjects.
In this Lightroom tutorial I share how to create a pastel feel for a beach hut image taken on the fly. I show how to correct a horizon, use the colour mixer to make adjustments to the light of individual colours in the image, and use the basic contrast, highlights and shadows controls to give a pastel feel to the image.
I have recently (March 2020) started a YouTube channel. In coming months I will be adding short instructional videos about:
As I get used to my new light-weight Fuji camera, I took it out to a small wooded area of a local park near my in-laws to try and use it in a landscape environment. I had only brought a mini-tripod (about a 30cm tall). The shot uses a 1 second exposure to get the milky effect on the water running over the rapid.
Fujifilm X-T3, 10-24mm at 16mm, f8, 1 second
I have just upgraded my mirrorless camera to one that is better suited to landscape photography and a new wide angled lens. I haven’t really been out an about for taking landscapes, but I snatched these when I was walking around my home town (St Neots) the other day.
One of the great places along the south west tip of the Cornish penninsular is Porthleven. It gets brutally pummelled by high seas in wintertime as it faces straight at the Atlantic and there is nothing to stop the full forces of the winter storms hitting the village and storm watchers have recorded pictures of waves dwarfing and engulfing the church at the foot of the pier seen here in right of the image. I was here in early Nov last year and spent a day walking along the coast to Mullion before taking a couple of busses back to Porthleven where my car was parked. I arrived in the golden hour and had a chance to shoot some lovely warm images of the harbour, the coast and surfers just beyond the harbour wall. I hope you like them.
