Rendezvous at the Edge of Eternity
“Ah yes there’s a photographer down there,” said Lee. “That must be him!” We waved at the figure perched over his tripod at the edge of the void. The response confirmed it – we’d found our man. Friday brought a novel experience; for me it was the first time that Flickr had been responsible for engineering a rendezvous with one of you. On occasion I may have met one of you and discovered we share this platform, but as far as I can recall Flickr had never been the introduction to a face to face encounter. I’m sure you follow Mr Austin already; but if you don’t then you might want to take a look at his work – once you’ve finished reading today’s yarn from yours truly of course.
After considering a number of options, Lloyd had chosen his favoured location well, and we’d arranged to meet at Botallack Mine where the Crown Houses hover improbably at the edge of the cliffs where Atlantic gales routinely batter the westernmost corner of the land, bringing huge waves throughout the storm season. Quite how they’ve remained there for so long seems miraculous to me. It’s a place that offers a range of compositions, similar but different, with the conditions playing a leading role in the photographer’s choice of shutter speed. Even on relatively quiet days the sea will generally froth away like the contents of a boiling saucepan in the oblivion below. When the storms brew it becomes positively hostile, with only the boldest of adventurers taking their chances across the ledge of doom that will surely one day disappear forever and render compositions such as this no longer possible without either a drone or exceedingly long arms. But on this visit the sea was as quiet as we’d seen it in any season, bringing the opportunity to use our ND filters to deliver very long shutter speeds. I figured if Lloyd was doing it then I’d better have a go for myself – shoulders of giants and all that. One of the benefits of taking exposures of ten minutes and more is that you don’t take quite so many as you normally might. It does make a change to sift effortlessly through a handful of raw files in contrast to staring blankly at the usual two or three hundred that I usually manage to amass when I’m at the coast.
The moment Lee and I arrived on the scene and set up our tripods, the clear sunny conditions that had lit up the distant Isles of Scilly on the horizon as we’d driven along the pot hole riddled track to the car park vanished in favour of a bank of cloud. This seems to happen far more often than it should. Quite how we manage to deliver flat conditions with such metronomic regularity remains a mystery, but while the letterbox of blue sky between the clouds and the horizon refused to yield, so did the hope of catching that brief moment of the late sun illuminating the Crown Houses. So, I waited at the vantage point I’d chosen, hunkered almost as low as it was possible to go without taking any unnecessary risks, practically skating down the rocky slope in my poorly chosen footwear and casting my eyes about to see whether Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean were lurking nearby with a set of scorecards. It was the furthest and lowest point to which I’d ever allowed myself to go along the granite outcrop across the ledge, and as I sat here waiting and hoping I wondered whether I’d have the courage to plant myself here again in busier weather – with more appropriate footwear of course.
And then the light came – for no more than four or five minutes before the sun vanished for good. I’ve been here plenty of times before, but I think this is my personal favourite from those many moments before the long abandoned sturdy engine houses that seem to be able to withstand everything the ocean throws at them. We’re always reminded that it’s all about the light after all. A few more long exposures into the blue hour and after the pinks in the cloud that briefly threatened to steal northwards far enough to enter the show began to retreat, and we agreed we were done. Lloyd had a rental apartment to clean before his long journey home the following day, and Lee and I had an appointment with a couple of pints of Sea Fury in the Plume, where someone in control had rather bizarrely chosen to play “Revolution Number 9” by The Beatles on the stereo – not one of their catchier numbers in my experience. If you’ve ever made it that far through the White Album, I suspect you’ll probably agree. I’m glad for Lloyd’s sake that he missed that bit at least. In arranging for us to meet at Botallack it later transpired that he’d also missed a blood red sunset captured by a number of excited phone wielding friends and shared on other social media. But I decided it was best not to tell him so he’ll never find out will he………?
Rendezvous at the Edge of Eternity
“Ah yes there’s a photographer down there,” said Lee. “That must be him!” We waved at the figure perched over his tripod at the edge of the void. The response confirmed it – we’d found our man. Friday brought a novel experience; for me it was the first time that Flickr had been responsible for engineering a rendezvous with one of you. On occasion I may have met one of you and discovered we share this platform, but as far as I can recall Flickr had never been the introduction to a face to face encounter. I’m sure you follow Mr Austin already; but if you don’t then you might want to take a look at his work – once you’ve finished reading today’s yarn from yours truly of course.
After considering a number of options, Lloyd had chosen his favoured location well, and we’d arranged to meet at Botallack Mine where the Crown Houses hover improbably at the edge of the cliffs where Atlantic gales routinely batter the westernmost corner of the land, bringing huge waves throughout the storm season. Quite how they’ve remained there for so long seems miraculous to me. It’s a place that offers a range of compositions, similar but different, with the conditions playing a leading role in the photographer’s choice of shutter speed. Even on relatively quiet days the sea will generally froth away like the contents of a boiling saucepan in the oblivion below. When the storms brew it becomes positively hostile, with only the boldest of adventurers taking their chances across the ledge of doom that will surely one day disappear forever and render compositions such as this no longer possible without either a drone or exceedingly long arms. But on this visit the sea was as quiet as we’d seen it in any season, bringing the opportunity to use our ND filters to deliver very long shutter speeds. I figured if Lloyd was doing it then I’d better have a go for myself – shoulders of giants and all that. One of the benefits of taking exposures of ten minutes and more is that you don’t take quite so many as you normally might. It does make a change to sift effortlessly through a handful of raw files in contrast to staring blankly at the usual two or three hundred that I usually manage to amass when I’m at the coast.
The moment Lee and I arrived on the scene and set up our tripods, the clear sunny conditions that had lit up the distant Isles of Scilly on the horizon as we’d driven along the pot hole riddled track to the car park vanished in favour of a bank of cloud. This seems to happen far more often than it should. Quite how we manage to deliver flat conditions with such metronomic regularity remains a mystery, but while the letterbox of blue sky between the clouds and the horizon refused to yield, so did the hope of catching that brief moment of the late sun illuminating the Crown Houses. So, I waited at the vantage point I’d chosen, hunkered almost as low as it was possible to go without taking any unnecessary risks, practically skating down the rocky slope in my poorly chosen footwear and casting my eyes about to see whether Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean were lurking nearby with a set of scorecards. It was the furthest and lowest point to which I’d ever allowed myself to go along the granite outcrop across the ledge, and as I sat here waiting and hoping I wondered whether I’d have the courage to plant myself here again in busier weather – with more appropriate footwear of course.
And then the light came – for no more than four or five minutes before the sun vanished for good. I’ve been here plenty of times before, but I think this is my personal favourite from those many moments before the long abandoned sturdy engine houses that seem to be able to withstand everything the ocean throws at them. We’re always reminded that it’s all about the light after all. A few more long exposures into the blue hour and after the pinks in the cloud that briefly threatened to steal northwards far enough to enter the show began to retreat, and we agreed we were done. Lloyd had a rental apartment to clean before his long journey home the following day, and Lee and I had an appointment with a couple of pints of Sea Fury in the Plume, where someone in control had rather bizarrely chosen to play “Revolution Number 9” by The Beatles on the stereo – not one of their catchier numbers in my experience. If you’ve ever made it that far through the White Album, I suspect you’ll probably agree. I’m glad for Lloyd’s sake that he missed that bit at least. In arranging for us to meet at Botallack it later transpired that he’d also missed a blood red sunset captured by a number of excited phone wielding friends and shared on other social media. But I decided it was best not to tell him so he’ll never find out will he………?