The Often Overlooked
I don’t usually pay much attention to our nearest beach. Just three miles from home along a narrow winding downhill road past the local pasty emporium (seven out of ten for the flaky steak variety), Porthtowan has always been a bit of a curate’s egg to me. It’s as good as any of them for surfing, although high tide can be a bit of an adventure, and the Blue Bar with its bay windows offering expansive sea views is a popular haunt in these parts, but I’ve never really got my head around how to smuggle a decent photograph home from here. The only pictures I’ve ever taken worth sharing are of surfers in action, using the wonderful 70-200mm lens that’s faster than Usain Bolt in a hurry for the bus. Maybe that’s still the case – you can decide that for yourself. But when there’s Portreath just a couple of miles further down the coast, and then my favourite playground at Godrevy another ten minutes’ drive away from there, it always seems so easy to end up heading west instead. Unless of course I’m going the other way towards Holywell Bay. The common factor among those favoured beaches is that you can look out to sea and there will be an obvious focal point to settle the camera on. It’s the same when I head down towards the infinite pleasures around Land’s End. Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination on my part, but I do like to give you a sporting chance of realising what you’re supposed to be looking at when you take the time to view my images.
But Ali likes to bring Rosie here, her sister’s cocker spaniel who loves to race over the clifftops in her endless search for unwary rabbits. Sometimes I go with them, just to get a breath of air and a small dose of vitamin D from those mood filled winter skies, and New Year’s Day brought a classic “I suppose I’d better move my backside from the sofa” moment. The Great Escape wasn’t on the TV anyway as far as I could tell, and if Steve McQueen couldn’t be bothered to entertain me with his motorcycle antics then it seemed that the world was telling me to go outside and embrace it. I don’t always take the camera with me on these outings, but then again, I usually regret it as soon as I take one look at the sea. A couple of weeks earlier we’d arrived here on a sunny Thursday afternoon; one of those calm winter days when the Atlantic was propelling perfectly formed rollers crowned with snowy white plumes of seaspray towards the shore. The phone clearly wasn’t up to it and I cursed myself for failing to do the simplest of things and putting the camera in the bag with a suitably long lens. The sense of lost opportunity from that beautiful day remained with me, and since then each time I’ve gone to the clifftop tooled up for action – albeit without a tripod.
I hadn’t intended to do anything more than take a couple of shots to dabble with half-heartedly in an idle moment in Lightroom later, but as we arrived at the view over the beach, two things caught my eye. Firstly, the swell was in a playful mood, with phases where groups of waves would break extravagantly across the scene. And secondly the cliffs beyond somewhere just off Portreath to the west had almost completely disappeared into a haze of sea mist. Normally from this spot you can see all the way across to St Ives, even on a dull day, but today things were different. And so the inevitable came home to roost. With seascapes every single image is unique, bringing the usual inability to know when to stop that afflicts me every time I’m in this situation, and my co-walkers were soon somewhere over the horizon above me on their circuit towards Chapel Porth of the eastern side of the cliff.
I really should have brought a tripod with me. I’d made my usual mistake of bringing the unforgiving but lightweight budget lens with the enormous focal range; the one where I’m never sure about exactly what it’s focusing on. I tried sitting on the grass, then balancing the camera on my knee and using the touchscreen autofocus, but I couldn’t really see the composition properly. Through the viewfinder I tried it alternately in autofocus and then in manual focus, producing another glut of raw files that would take some sifting later. As the time since I’d last seen Ali and Rosie increased, soft peachy tones began to gently warm the sky. With little idea as to whether I’d got a worthwhile shot, I eventually decided that enough was enough and chased off along the path in search of my companions. The inside of Ali’s car may resemble a farmyard as a result of the extracurricular dog walking activities, but getting into it was still far preferable to walking home. Besides which we might get a cup of tea at her sister’s house as a reward for our efforts.
Later that evening the sifting began. The good news was that each time I went through the many, image number 9048 stood out. After three passes through the lot of them, firstly on the PC’s photo viewing software and then in Lightroom, image 9048 was still the one that caught my attention. I think it was the two lines of breaking waves that singled it out. And gradually, very much like that Tamron lens and Porthtowan itself, the image grew on me. The energy of the ocean below me and the soft sky palette had conspired to win me over. Somehow from this unprepared adventure I’d managed to wrestle an image I thought worthy of sharing with this most discerning of audiences. I hope it passes muster.
Still wish I’d taken my tripod though. Do have a lovely weekend.
The Often Overlooked
I don’t usually pay much attention to our nearest beach. Just three miles from home along a narrow winding downhill road past the local pasty emporium (seven out of ten for the flaky steak variety), Porthtowan has always been a bit of a curate’s egg to me. It’s as good as any of them for surfing, although high tide can be a bit of an adventure, and the Blue Bar with its bay windows offering expansive sea views is a popular haunt in these parts, but I’ve never really got my head around how to smuggle a decent photograph home from here. The only pictures I’ve ever taken worth sharing are of surfers in action, using the wonderful 70-200mm lens that’s faster than Usain Bolt in a hurry for the bus. Maybe that’s still the case – you can decide that for yourself. But when there’s Portreath just a couple of miles further down the coast, and then my favourite playground at Godrevy another ten minutes’ drive away from there, it always seems so easy to end up heading west instead. Unless of course I’m going the other way towards Holywell Bay. The common factor among those favoured beaches is that you can look out to sea and there will be an obvious focal point to settle the camera on. It’s the same when I head down towards the infinite pleasures around Land’s End. Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination on my part, but I do like to give you a sporting chance of realising what you’re supposed to be looking at when you take the time to view my images.
But Ali likes to bring Rosie here, her sister’s cocker spaniel who loves to race over the clifftops in her endless search for unwary rabbits. Sometimes I go with them, just to get a breath of air and a small dose of vitamin D from those mood filled winter skies, and New Year’s Day brought a classic “I suppose I’d better move my backside from the sofa” moment. The Great Escape wasn’t on the TV anyway as far as I could tell, and if Steve McQueen couldn’t be bothered to entertain me with his motorcycle antics then it seemed that the world was telling me to go outside and embrace it. I don’t always take the camera with me on these outings, but then again, I usually regret it as soon as I take one look at the sea. A couple of weeks earlier we’d arrived here on a sunny Thursday afternoon; one of those calm winter days when the Atlantic was propelling perfectly formed rollers crowned with snowy white plumes of seaspray towards the shore. The phone clearly wasn’t up to it and I cursed myself for failing to do the simplest of things and putting the camera in the bag with a suitably long lens. The sense of lost opportunity from that beautiful day remained with me, and since then each time I’ve gone to the clifftop tooled up for action – albeit without a tripod.
I hadn’t intended to do anything more than take a couple of shots to dabble with half-heartedly in an idle moment in Lightroom later, but as we arrived at the view over the beach, two things caught my eye. Firstly, the swell was in a playful mood, with phases where groups of waves would break extravagantly across the scene. And secondly the cliffs beyond somewhere just off Portreath to the west had almost completely disappeared into a haze of sea mist. Normally from this spot you can see all the way across to St Ives, even on a dull day, but today things were different. And so the inevitable came home to roost. With seascapes every single image is unique, bringing the usual inability to know when to stop that afflicts me every time I’m in this situation, and my co-walkers were soon somewhere over the horizon above me on their circuit towards Chapel Porth of the eastern side of the cliff.
I really should have brought a tripod with me. I’d made my usual mistake of bringing the unforgiving but lightweight budget lens with the enormous focal range; the one where I’m never sure about exactly what it’s focusing on. I tried sitting on the grass, then balancing the camera on my knee and using the touchscreen autofocus, but I couldn’t really see the composition properly. Through the viewfinder I tried it alternately in autofocus and then in manual focus, producing another glut of raw files that would take some sifting later. As the time since I’d last seen Ali and Rosie increased, soft peachy tones began to gently warm the sky. With little idea as to whether I’d got a worthwhile shot, I eventually decided that enough was enough and chased off along the path in search of my companions. The inside of Ali’s car may resemble a farmyard as a result of the extracurricular dog walking activities, but getting into it was still far preferable to walking home. Besides which we might get a cup of tea at her sister’s house as a reward for our efforts.
Later that evening the sifting began. The good news was that each time I went through the many, image number 9048 stood out. After three passes through the lot of them, firstly on the PC’s photo viewing software and then in Lightroom, image 9048 was still the one that caught my attention. I think it was the two lines of breaking waves that singled it out. And gradually, very much like that Tamron lens and Porthtowan itself, the image grew on me. The energy of the ocean below me and the soft sky palette had conspired to win me over. Somehow from this unprepared adventure I’d managed to wrestle an image I thought worthy of sharing with this most discerning of audiences. I hope it passes muster.
Still wish I’d taken my tripod though. Do have a lovely weekend.