Quiet Calamities on the Secret Beach
Those of you who are kind enough to follow my exploits on a regular basis may remember a tale of near disaster at St Agnes Head in April last year. On that evening events conspired to very nearly lose me an expensive wide angle lens over an Atlantic clifftop when my camera bag decided upon a little adventure of its own and raced off down a steep slope towards oblivion without warning. You can read the story in these pages. I can't, because it still gives me occasional sleepless nights, but suffice to say the lens stopped short of the point of disaster and survived to face another day. In fact I'd only recently decided to purchase it as part of a plan to upgrade to a full frame setup before heading to Iceland three months later.
I knew from YouTube research and the tales of one Mads Peter Iversen, a rather wonderful landscape photographer from Denmark whom I follow almost religiously, that there was a secret beach where you could escape the chaos of Reynisfjara. When you arrive here, you might just find a place to park among the coaches that have disgorged their passengers onto the beach in huge numbers. Iceland may be huge and empty, but there are pockets where you may as well be in Morrisons when the pies have just been reduced to half price. Reynisfjara is one of those pockets, visitors inevitably drawn to its beauty and into our compositions on day trips from Reykjavik.
The secret beach is really only secret because it's camouflaged by a cluster of large rocks to the eastern end of Reynisfjara. It's not always accessible, so you need to pick your moment and keep a close eye on the tide and conditions, but if you can find it, you might just have it to yourself. We did. The first thing you find is that it's a surprisingly tricky place to shoot the Reynisdrangar sea stacks from. The cluster of smaller rocks in the foreground are a challenge to keep contained within the frame and avoid any edge patrol issues. Setting up takes up planning and concentration and can leave a middle aged man who struggles with multitasking vulnerable, something I soon learned to my cost. As I turned my back to fetch the lens cloth from my bag, the tripod succumbed to the shifting shingle under the weight of a heavy Canon DSLR and wide angle lens and toppled over. It was one of those moments that happens in an almost dreamlike manner, the ensemble falling in what seems like slow motion, but the only thing moving even more ponderously is one's own reaction.
Fortunately, (if that's the word for it) all that was damaged was my beloved and much used six stop filter, which shattered and buckled under the fall and wedded itself almost permanently to the thread of the lens. That was bad enough but at least the the lens was still functioning. At least it was until a month later, when 2000 miles further south in Majorca I stood on a very green slipway to photograph a white fishing boat on clear water. But instead of pressing the shutter I described a pirouette which isn't going to earn me a place in "Strictly Come Dancing" any time soon and landed on my elbow, before sliding helplessly on my back towards 4 feet of seawater. Luckily once more I stopped before landing in the water, staring in dazed confusion at a camera that had taken a bump on the concrete as I went down, while a woman shrieked from a balcony above that I was injured. I hadn't noticed. Two Majorcan fishermen nearby interrupted their peaceful lunch and patched up the elbow that was bleeding away as if I'd severed a major artery, yet all I worried about was whether the camera was intact. It's not like I haven't lived by the sea my entire life after all. There's a reason why a slipway is so called, yet lost in the moment I appeared to have forgotten that.
Three calamities all with the same lens. I wonder sometimes whether it's cursed. It used to auto focus almost instantly, whereas now it takes several days, if at all. I really should send it off to be repaired. There won't be a third photograph in this series. The white boat image never really justified the means in the first place if I'm honest.
Happy Friday all.
Quiet Calamities on the Secret Beach
Those of you who are kind enough to follow my exploits on a regular basis may remember a tale of near disaster at St Agnes Head in April last year. On that evening events conspired to very nearly lose me an expensive wide angle lens over an Atlantic clifftop when my camera bag decided upon a little adventure of its own and raced off down a steep slope towards oblivion without warning. You can read the story in these pages. I can't, because it still gives me occasional sleepless nights, but suffice to say the lens stopped short of the point of disaster and survived to face another day. In fact I'd only recently decided to purchase it as part of a plan to upgrade to a full frame setup before heading to Iceland three months later.
I knew from YouTube research and the tales of one Mads Peter Iversen, a rather wonderful landscape photographer from Denmark whom I follow almost religiously, that there was a secret beach where you could escape the chaos of Reynisfjara. When you arrive here, you might just find a place to park among the coaches that have disgorged their passengers onto the beach in huge numbers. Iceland may be huge and empty, but there are pockets where you may as well be in Morrisons when the pies have just been reduced to half price. Reynisfjara is one of those pockets, visitors inevitably drawn to its beauty and into our compositions on day trips from Reykjavik.
The secret beach is really only secret because it's camouflaged by a cluster of large rocks to the eastern end of Reynisfjara. It's not always accessible, so you need to pick your moment and keep a close eye on the tide and conditions, but if you can find it, you might just have it to yourself. We did. The first thing you find is that it's a surprisingly tricky place to shoot the Reynisdrangar sea stacks from. The cluster of smaller rocks in the foreground are a challenge to keep contained within the frame and avoid any edge patrol issues. Setting up takes up planning and concentration and can leave a middle aged man who struggles with multitasking vulnerable, something I soon learned to my cost. As I turned my back to fetch the lens cloth from my bag, the tripod succumbed to the shifting shingle under the weight of a heavy Canon DSLR and wide angle lens and toppled over. It was one of those moments that happens in an almost dreamlike manner, the ensemble falling in what seems like slow motion, but the only thing moving even more ponderously is one's own reaction.
Fortunately, (if that's the word for it) all that was damaged was my beloved and much used six stop filter, which shattered and buckled under the fall and wedded itself almost permanently to the thread of the lens. That was bad enough but at least the the lens was still functioning. At least it was until a month later, when 2000 miles further south in Majorca I stood on a very green slipway to photograph a white fishing boat on clear water. But instead of pressing the shutter I described a pirouette which isn't going to earn me a place in "Strictly Come Dancing" any time soon and landed on my elbow, before sliding helplessly on my back towards 4 feet of seawater. Luckily once more I stopped before landing in the water, staring in dazed confusion at a camera that had taken a bump on the concrete as I went down, while a woman shrieked from a balcony above that I was injured. I hadn't noticed. Two Majorcan fishermen nearby interrupted their peaceful lunch and patched up the elbow that was bleeding away as if I'd severed a major artery, yet all I worried about was whether the camera was intact. It's not like I haven't lived by the sea my entire life after all. There's a reason why a slipway is so called, yet lost in the moment I appeared to have forgotten that.
Three calamities all with the same lens. I wonder sometimes whether it's cursed. It used to auto focus almost instantly, whereas now it takes several days, if at all. I really should send it off to be repaired. There won't be a third photograph in this series. The white boat image never really justified the means in the first place if I'm honest.
Happy Friday all.