The Gulls - Attempt Number One
On my previous visit, a couple of weeks earlier, I noticed something that I’d never really registered before. As I crouched over my tripod on the rocks, halfway through a long exposure, they came in numbers, as they always seem to not long before sunset, a mass movement of gulls across the sky in front of me. The daily exodus from the mainland looked so familiar in this patch I know so intimately, yet at the same time, it seemed a novel experience. Why had I not paid the moment proper attention before today? Of course, by the time that long exposure had finished doing its business, the gulls had moved across the narrow strait between the headland and the lighthouse. The moment had gone until the next time. I went back to my briefly interrupted train of thought, and carried on shooting in the fading light. Not a bad evening’s work so it turned out. I used the new long lens on the lighthouse with the sun setting right beside it and was quite happy with the outcome. Maybe you saw that one in a recent post.
Two days later we were away for a brief trip to Exmoor, where an entire new catalogue of images was collected on the back of the camera. In time honoured fashion, some have already made it into the editing suite, others shared with the wider world in an initial fury of enthusiasm, while far too many linger pathetically in the folders where I left them, waiting to see the light of day. In fact I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever catch up with the backlog from the last couple of years. And all the while during the little adventure in the van across the border the sight of them sat in the forefront of my mind. “I’m going to try and photograph those gulls when we get home,” I told Ali. All I’ll need to do is sit and wait and not get sidetracked by distractions. The reminders seemed to be everywhere. After returning home we spent an evening at my son’s house and watched an enormous flock of rooks take to the air above us, filling the dusk with an almighty chorus as they made for their roost across the valley. “They do that every night,” we were told as we gazed at the sky. The following night, not quite ready to retire we strayed across the last half hour of Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” Still as terrifying as ever, yet it didn’t put me off as I went through my commitments for the week. “I’m going down to Godrevy on Thursday,” I announced.
So you probably already know what happened. Having found a quiet shelf at the edge of the cliff overlooking the lighthouse I sat and waited, checking my settings now and again to see whether anything needed changing as the light fell. With the remote cable connected I leaned back against the natural armchair that the shelf provided and watched for Grey Seals at the edge of the rocks below. The camera sat obediently on the tripod, strangely stripped of even a polarising filter as the vigil moved from the first hour to the second. I thought I’d see my subjects about half an hour before sunset, but I couldn’t be certain. From time to time, small groups of gulls raced across the space in front of me, sometimes comfortably within the frame, at others far too high above me to link into the scene. Should I change my focal length and go wider? I wasn’t really sure to be honest. Occasionally as a cluster flew past, I’d hit the shutter three or four times half-heartedly, wondering whether the sun was too bright and thinking about sticking a thumb across the offending area of the lens to be blended in later on. Lazily I didn’t bother. It wasn’t the shot I’d come for and I’d have to stand up and stoop over the camera to get it right. It seemed an awful lot of effort. I waited and waited, but still the birds refused to repeat the airborne extravaganza they’d laid on for me during the last visit.
Eventually, with five minutes to go before the sunset hour I gave up and swapped to the big telephoto lens that has so quickly become an ever present option in the bag. The narrow band of orange on the horizon sat directly behind the lighthouse, offering a zoom into the details against the dark silhouette of the island. Orange and black work so well together; the distraction had arrived. And of course that’s when every seagull on the peninsula decided to float in unison across the void. Almost one hundred minutes of waiting patiently and then the moment happens when I’d finally weakened. It takes a certain knack to have such bad timing you know. If there were a market for it, I’d make a fortune as a tutor.
But I could perhaps console myself in the fact that the gulls were heading across the scene rather than into it as I’d hoped. Maybe my presence among them on this lonely ledge had changed their pattern, or perhaps I’d imagined it that they all cross in unison each evening like they had done a couple of weeks earlier. Whatever the truth, it seemed I’d have to wait and try again. Maybe I’ll try another vantage point and hope they pay me less attention than I give to them.
The next day I tinkered with the images I’d collected. With no more than five or six gulls in any one image I’d had a mind to blend a number together and fill the sky with them. But when I did so I didn’t like the result at all as the scene became cluttered and messy, so in the end I chose just three separate images and stacked them together, ultimately only using two of them for the final result. Usually I feel that less is more, and more is chaos. So if I ever manage to remain patient enough to capture that evening exodus, then who knows whether I’ll like what I come home with anyway? Fun trying though.
As I drove home and the shadows crept in to steal what was left of the light, I noticed a lone figure up on one of the bridges over the dual carriageway. At the moment I passed beneath him he leaned out over the bridge and appeared to vent forth with a drenching of phlegm in the direction of my car. I’ve no idea who he was or what I'd done to offend him. Whether he’d singled me out for this treatment or was liberally spraying all passing traffic I cannot say. Maybe he didn’t like Skodas. Perhaps he was telling me what he thinks of my photography. It’s a strange world at times.
The Gulls - Attempt Number One
On my previous visit, a couple of weeks earlier, I noticed something that I’d never really registered before. As I crouched over my tripod on the rocks, halfway through a long exposure, they came in numbers, as they always seem to not long before sunset, a mass movement of gulls across the sky in front of me. The daily exodus from the mainland looked so familiar in this patch I know so intimately, yet at the same time, it seemed a novel experience. Why had I not paid the moment proper attention before today? Of course, by the time that long exposure had finished doing its business, the gulls had moved across the narrow strait between the headland and the lighthouse. The moment had gone until the next time. I went back to my briefly interrupted train of thought, and carried on shooting in the fading light. Not a bad evening’s work so it turned out. I used the new long lens on the lighthouse with the sun setting right beside it and was quite happy with the outcome. Maybe you saw that one in a recent post.
Two days later we were away for a brief trip to Exmoor, where an entire new catalogue of images was collected on the back of the camera. In time honoured fashion, some have already made it into the editing suite, others shared with the wider world in an initial fury of enthusiasm, while far too many linger pathetically in the folders where I left them, waiting to see the light of day. In fact I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever catch up with the backlog from the last couple of years. And all the while during the little adventure in the van across the border the sight of them sat in the forefront of my mind. “I’m going to try and photograph those gulls when we get home,” I told Ali. All I’ll need to do is sit and wait and not get sidetracked by distractions. The reminders seemed to be everywhere. After returning home we spent an evening at my son’s house and watched an enormous flock of rooks take to the air above us, filling the dusk with an almighty chorus as they made for their roost across the valley. “They do that every night,” we were told as we gazed at the sky. The following night, not quite ready to retire we strayed across the last half hour of Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” Still as terrifying as ever, yet it didn’t put me off as I went through my commitments for the week. “I’m going down to Godrevy on Thursday,” I announced.
So you probably already know what happened. Having found a quiet shelf at the edge of the cliff overlooking the lighthouse I sat and waited, checking my settings now and again to see whether anything needed changing as the light fell. With the remote cable connected I leaned back against the natural armchair that the shelf provided and watched for Grey Seals at the edge of the rocks below. The camera sat obediently on the tripod, strangely stripped of even a polarising filter as the vigil moved from the first hour to the second. I thought I’d see my subjects about half an hour before sunset, but I couldn’t be certain. From time to time, small groups of gulls raced across the space in front of me, sometimes comfortably within the frame, at others far too high above me to link into the scene. Should I change my focal length and go wider? I wasn’t really sure to be honest. Occasionally as a cluster flew past, I’d hit the shutter three or four times half-heartedly, wondering whether the sun was too bright and thinking about sticking a thumb across the offending area of the lens to be blended in later on. Lazily I didn’t bother. It wasn’t the shot I’d come for and I’d have to stand up and stoop over the camera to get it right. It seemed an awful lot of effort. I waited and waited, but still the birds refused to repeat the airborne extravaganza they’d laid on for me during the last visit.
Eventually, with five minutes to go before the sunset hour I gave up and swapped to the big telephoto lens that has so quickly become an ever present option in the bag. The narrow band of orange on the horizon sat directly behind the lighthouse, offering a zoom into the details against the dark silhouette of the island. Orange and black work so well together; the distraction had arrived. And of course that’s when every seagull on the peninsula decided to float in unison across the void. Almost one hundred minutes of waiting patiently and then the moment happens when I’d finally weakened. It takes a certain knack to have such bad timing you know. If there were a market for it, I’d make a fortune as a tutor.
But I could perhaps console myself in the fact that the gulls were heading across the scene rather than into it as I’d hoped. Maybe my presence among them on this lonely ledge had changed their pattern, or perhaps I’d imagined it that they all cross in unison each evening like they had done a couple of weeks earlier. Whatever the truth, it seemed I’d have to wait and try again. Maybe I’ll try another vantage point and hope they pay me less attention than I give to them.
The next day I tinkered with the images I’d collected. With no more than five or six gulls in any one image I’d had a mind to blend a number together and fill the sky with them. But when I did so I didn’t like the result at all as the scene became cluttered and messy, so in the end I chose just three separate images and stacked them together, ultimately only using two of them for the final result. Usually I feel that less is more, and more is chaos. So if I ever manage to remain patient enough to capture that evening exodus, then who knows whether I’ll like what I come home with anyway? Fun trying though.
As I drove home and the shadows crept in to steal what was left of the light, I noticed a lone figure up on one of the bridges over the dual carriageway. At the moment I passed beneath him he leaned out over the bridge and appeared to vent forth with a drenching of phlegm in the direction of my car. I’ve no idea who he was or what I'd done to offend him. Whether he’d singled me out for this treatment or was liberally spraying all passing traffic I cannot say. Maybe he didn’t like Skodas. Perhaps he was telling me what he thinks of my photography. It’s a strange world at times.