Some may remember that last June I found a wild poppy field nearby and went a bit mad photographing it. As is the nature of natural poppy fields, it is not there this year, the land having been rotated back to crops. However, thanks to the photographers’ network, I have found another, rather further afield but, as last night’s visit confirmed, completely worth the trip. More to follow!
I recently had to give an interview in which I was asked to name my favourite landscape location. I found it difficult to answer as I tend to be focused on wherever I am with my camera at any given moment. However, one place popped into my head unbidden. Anyone who has been around here long enough will not be surprised that I thought of La Corbière.
Guarding the extreme Western edge of Jersey, one of the British Channel Islands, this lighthouse has well and truly captured my imagination.
We have been to Jersey three times during the last two years and during each visit I have devoted evenings to this one place. There is something about the way the lonely, white lighthouse sits out at sea, precariously perched on Jersey’s characteristic red rock, that stirs the soul.
It has so many moods. Sometimes, it is wild and windswept, spray beaten and inaccessible. At others it is almost serene, especially at low tide when reflected in the still pool at its base.
On one occasion, during my only Autumnal visit so far, low clouds dispersed the setting sun, crowning the lighthouse with rays.
For the photographer, La Corbière offers so many possibilities. When the tide is out, a causeway is revealed, making perfect lead-in lines. Interesting rocks and pools create endless compositional opportunities and ensure that even if there are other photographers about, there’s plenty of space for everyone.
When the tide is in, higher and wider views can be had from the cliff top. Even in high summer, there is a good chance of having the lighthouse to oneself, or perhaps just sharing it with one other photographer and maybe a romantic couple watching the sunset.
There is one mood I have yet to witness, however. Each time we have been there, the weather has been fairly mild. I have yet to see the lighthouse brave a proper storm. To capture a mighty wave crashing over the tower would really be something. I will just have to keep going back!
In a rash moment I recently signed up for WordPress’s Writing 101. Writing, on a photography blog? Yes, I did wonder if I knew what I was doing. I suppose I wanted to get back to why I started this blog in the first place. It wasn’t just to share photographs; I had Flickr and 500px for that. When I started Focused Moments, back in April 2012, I was in the middle of my MA. Perhaps the blog was a way of creating my own original(ish) content when I was otherwise immersed in other people’s words. (As my subject was Victorian Literature, there were a great many words!)
Over time, however, Focused Moments inexorably tended towards a photo-a-day kind of blog. Before more touchy readers protest, I am not suggesting for a moment that there is anything wrong with that sort of blog, just that it’s not what I intended. With Writing 101, which began yesterday, there are daily prompts. The first one was to free write for 20 minutes. Well, I didn’t feel like free writing about photography. That prompt seems, to me, more appropriate to the creation of fiction. So I have taken comfort in the challenge’s statement that we can be as free as we like in our interpretation of each prompt, and I have ignored it completely! Instead, I have thought about beginnings.
It must be fairly obvious to anyone who is kind enough to stop by here from time to time that I like landscape photography. For me, setting up somewhere and waiting for the light is a beautiful, and healing experience. But I am not really a morning person, so most of my imagery is made at the end of the day. However, last Friday Pete and I managed to get up for dawn. At this time of year and at these latitudes, that is no mean feat. Our alarms went off at 4am, and I can tell you that, as we were blearily dressing and mainlining caffeine, the planned adventure suddenly seemed far less appealing.
Once we were outside, however, all that changed. There wasn’t much of a sunrise, but it didn’t matter. We had the beach to ourselves. A hush hung over the morning, broken only by the swoosh of the waves and the haunting cry of oyster catchers. Homer’s ‘rosy fingered dawn’ delicately coloured the sky as a solitary fishing smack chugged out of the bay. I could understand why many landscape photographers prefer this subtle time of day to the more spectacular sunset. As my children grow, and need me less, one small but significant compensation is that opportunities to get out for daybreak will grow. The beginning of a new phase in life will involve seeing more of the beginning of each new day. There’s a certain poetry in that.
To have made a beginning is half of the business.
-Horace
The child of the morning, rosy-fingered dawn, appeared.
-Homer
On Thursday, Pete and I enjoyed a six hour walk on the vast, low-tide beach of Saundersfoot Bay, returning via the Coastal Path along the cliffs. Although the sky was overcast and it rained intermittently, I could see why Pembrokeshire is celebrated for its light. I wanted to capture the almost-sliver of the diffused light on the sluggish sea.
My first post from Wales was all about colour, although even there I nudged the saturation and vibrancy sliders to the left, because the colours in the RAW file were almost too rich to be believed! More and more, these days, I find myself wanting to desaturate images. For some beautiful images that exemplify sliding to the left, try Asmita Kapadia’s website.
f/11, 16mm, ISO 100, .5″
We’re just back from a short trip to Wales. I have a lot of images to upload but thought I’d start with the most recent, from last night. We found a super sunset spot for Lilly, our camper van, looking over Freshwater West beach, Pembrokeshire. I was so busy looking West that I almost didn’t notice a rainbow appearing behind us.
f/11, 16mm, ISO 100, .8″
It just got better and better as the setting sun turned the clouds pink. By the end, I’d had a good soaking (well, you can’t have rainbows without rain) and I was very glad of my camera’s weather seals. We loved what we saw of Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire and have already agreed to go back as soon as we can.
f/11, 16mm, ISO 100, 1.6″
By the way, the small triangular structure in the first shot is a seaweed drying hut. More on that anon.
On Friday, I enjoyed a trip out to Three Farms Meadows with my friend, Tony Antoniou. The landscape here is special because Surrey is a heavily populated county. Open spaces like this are rare and ever more under threat. 
I cannot hope to convey the joy of stepping through the gate onto this vast, open, empty landscape. We spent an hour up there, in the company of skylarks, bees and a pair of red kites soaring overhead.
Sadly, Three Farms Meadows is under very real threat. 2,500 new homes are planned for this site. I understand how desperate the housing situation is in this crowded little country of mine. But still, I cannot help but dread the loss of this precious place. The price seems too high.
One day last month, I managed to get out to Chatley Heath during some early morning mist. The forest of towering scots pines looked spooky in the mist so I gave this image an infrared style treatment. By the early afternoon, the mist had burned off and colour returned.
I love going back to familiar locations and discovering how their mood changes with the season and the light.
Last week I had the chance to pop down to Selsey and photograph the RNLI’s Lifeboat station. It is an imposing structure, with its long gangway linking it to the shore. I have always been fascinated by the story of lifeboats. Perhaps my interest lies partly in the fact that a good portion of my first twelve years were spent at sea, even encountering a lifeboat on a particularly foggy day off the Devon coast when it was a very welcome sight indeed. The story of the lifeboat service is full of daring deeds and sacrifices. I have often wondered why the BBC, or indeed, Hollywood, has failed to make a drama about it. Still, to this day, the lifeboats are manned by volunteers, people with day jobs who feel it right to offer their service in aid of those in peril on the sea.
If you are interested in maritime history, you might enjoy this blog: Map of Time.
4″, f/11, 35mm, ISO 200, Big Stopper and circ. polariser
The internet has, mostly, been a marvellous thing for enthusiast photographers, not least because images are readily available for our viewing and educational pleasure. Although there is still nothing quite like seeing an image in print, we no longer need to buy a magazine or go to an exhibition for our daily dose of photo inspiration.
1.6″, f/7.1, 70mm, ISO 200, Big Stopper and circ. polariser.
As most of us have realised, however, volume does not equal quality and discernment is a skill we must develop to become better photographers. One of the difficulties in our way is that fact that most photosharing sites, like Flickr and 500px, reward the high-impact, stand-alone image. Often, subtler images, that reward a more lingering gaze, are overlooked in the frenetic world of internet attention spans.
2″, f/8, 70mm. ISO 200, Big Stopper and circ. polariser.
Recently, I have found myself enjoying Adobe’s image-sharing site, Behance, not only because overall the standard of imagery is high, but because Behance is geared towards projects rather than stand-alone images. This is where the professionals hang out and, perhaps because they tend to be working on commissioned projects, the site abounds in sequences of images, connected visually and creatively into cohesive wholes. If you have not yet found Behance, I recommend a visit. Just select photography from the ‘creative fields’ drop down menu and soak up the gorgeousness.
20″, f/11, 70mm, ISO 50, Big Stopper and circ. polariser.
Inspired by what I have been seeing there, I have started to make sets of images, linked by style, subject or even colour. The five images posted here were all taken on the same day last week when I had to be in West Sussex. The weather was stormy, with sudden bursts of bright sunlight in front of heavy skies, so I decided to exploit that changeable feeling, deliberately using a variety of shutter speeds to capture the sea’s mood. By afternoon, the weather had eased but I attempted to carry the morning’s colour palette into the afternoon’s shoot, at Selsey Lifeboat station.
1/60, f/11, 16mm, ISO 50, Big Stopper and circ. polariser.
Incidentally, the second image is of a wrecked portion of WW2 mulberry harbour that has been rusting away on Aldwick beach for seventy years. Believe it or not, I grew up literally a stone’s throw from this wreck but have only now bothered to photograph it. Sometimes we overlook the things closest to us.
f/11, ISO 50, 133secs, 16mm. 0.6 ND hard grad, Big Stopper, and circ. polariser.
We spent the Easter weekend in Newquay, on Cornwall’s wild Atlantic coast. While the others surfed, I explored the rocks on Fistral Beach. Although the day we had set aside for exploring further afield was rained off, I had two lovely afternoons with my camera and long exposure filters. Fun.
Focused Moments 