Armed and Ready
“I fancy having a go at the Armed Knight.”
Lloyd wasn’t declaring his intention to engage a fourteenth century nobleman in hand to hand combat as far as I could tell. Besides which I don’t think there are many of those left in these parts anymore; not since the chippy in St Just began closing its doors on a Saturday evening at any rate. He must have meant the sea stack at Land’s End, the one that’s so often overlooked in favour of the Enys Dodnan sea arch and Longships Lighthouse. Despite coming here plenty of times over the years, I’d only very rarely - just once as far as I could tell - made it the centre of attention, all too often making a beeline for exactly the same spot and shooting the same scene over and over. Of course it’s a great scene, never the same twice in my experience, but maybe I had been getting a little too single minded.
The Armed Knight suggestion seemed like a very good one to me. We’d been toying with the idea of Botallack, but the tide wasn’t quite where we wanted it to be, and perhaps we’d try that one later in the week instead. So with renewed purpose and the sense that I’d be shooting something different at Land’s End this time, I climbed into the car and headed west. I’m always glad for an excuse to head towards the Edge of Eternity, where you can stand at the edge of the cliffs and gaze towards the west. Just two thousand two hundred miles of ocean between here and Newfoundland after the Isles of Scilly. They’re very often visible from here, but not on this delightfully moody afternoon.
It wasn’t a day for changing lenses, and although the Armed Knight was going to be the main attraction, I had rapidly rearranged the inserts in the camera bag to include the telephoto lens, which I’d mounted separately on the crop body, for the odd rapid burst in the direction of Longships Lighthouse. But that’s another story - one that ran parallel to this adventure. So while the second set up lay close at hand, this camera sat on the tripod, often sheltering under a shower cap, waiting for the light to do something exciting. Lloyd and I were meeting for the first time since his previous visit to Cornwall a year earlier, and we planted our tripods a dozen yards apart, catching up in between shots, often losing entire sentences to the testing conditions around us. In strong winds it would be a bit of a challenge to capture the fury of the ocean, but if you don’t try, you don’t give yourself a chance of success. It also helps if you stand on the windward side of the camera and park yourself in the lee of a rocky outcrop, I so often find. Those granite fortresses at the edges of the land here not only make for compositional tools, they also act as shelters from the elements on days like this.
Things were going well. The parallel story was developing in those moments when the sun shone across the sea onto the lighthouse and its attendant cluster of rocks, and from time to time a glow would appear at the horizon, separated by drifts of driving rain to the south. It was the sort of day I enjoy most in these elemental corners of the landscape - ever changing, full of grimy mood, at times furious. The sort of day one might imagine JMW Turner in his oilskins, two hundred years earlier, dabbing spots of light onto his canvas against the murky dark inks of the ocean as the winds whipped around his easel.
While Lloyd stayed in the position we’d occupied for ninety minutes or more, I decided I might try another composition, and it was one that delivered my favourite moments of the day. The sea had by now taken on a shade of green that had to be seen to be believed, and the polariser intensified the colours throughout the scene. Those dabs of soft orange light continued to play at the edge of the sea, and from this much lower position I felt closer to everything. The weather was now coming straight at me, rather than from the side, and I knew that as I took this image it would be among the last moments before the payoff came in the form of an almighty bristling shower coming straight towards us.
Ten minutes later, we were back at the car park, shaking the rainwater from our clothes and camera bags. It had been an excellent reunion shoot. You know it’s been a good shoot when you’re soaked. And when you come away with two entirely different shots that tick your boxes, you’re always going to go home with a big wet grin from ear to ear. Even if the local chippy is closed.
Armed and Ready
“I fancy having a go at the Armed Knight.”
Lloyd wasn’t declaring his intention to engage a fourteenth century nobleman in hand to hand combat as far as I could tell. Besides which I don’t think there are many of those left in these parts anymore; not since the chippy in St Just began closing its doors on a Saturday evening at any rate. He must have meant the sea stack at Land’s End, the one that’s so often overlooked in favour of the Enys Dodnan sea arch and Longships Lighthouse. Despite coming here plenty of times over the years, I’d only very rarely - just once as far as I could tell - made it the centre of attention, all too often making a beeline for exactly the same spot and shooting the same scene over and over. Of course it’s a great scene, never the same twice in my experience, but maybe I had been getting a little too single minded.
The Armed Knight suggestion seemed like a very good one to me. We’d been toying with the idea of Botallack, but the tide wasn’t quite where we wanted it to be, and perhaps we’d try that one later in the week instead. So with renewed purpose and the sense that I’d be shooting something different at Land’s End this time, I climbed into the car and headed west. I’m always glad for an excuse to head towards the Edge of Eternity, where you can stand at the edge of the cliffs and gaze towards the west. Just two thousand two hundred miles of ocean between here and Newfoundland after the Isles of Scilly. They’re very often visible from here, but not on this delightfully moody afternoon.
It wasn’t a day for changing lenses, and although the Armed Knight was going to be the main attraction, I had rapidly rearranged the inserts in the camera bag to include the telephoto lens, which I’d mounted separately on the crop body, for the odd rapid burst in the direction of Longships Lighthouse. But that’s another story - one that ran parallel to this adventure. So while the second set up lay close at hand, this camera sat on the tripod, often sheltering under a shower cap, waiting for the light to do something exciting. Lloyd and I were meeting for the first time since his previous visit to Cornwall a year earlier, and we planted our tripods a dozen yards apart, catching up in between shots, often losing entire sentences to the testing conditions around us. In strong winds it would be a bit of a challenge to capture the fury of the ocean, but if you don’t try, you don’t give yourself a chance of success. It also helps if you stand on the windward side of the camera and park yourself in the lee of a rocky outcrop, I so often find. Those granite fortresses at the edges of the land here not only make for compositional tools, they also act as shelters from the elements on days like this.
Things were going well. The parallel story was developing in those moments when the sun shone across the sea onto the lighthouse and its attendant cluster of rocks, and from time to time a glow would appear at the horizon, separated by drifts of driving rain to the south. It was the sort of day I enjoy most in these elemental corners of the landscape - ever changing, full of grimy mood, at times furious. The sort of day one might imagine JMW Turner in his oilskins, two hundred years earlier, dabbing spots of light onto his canvas against the murky dark inks of the ocean as the winds whipped around his easel.
While Lloyd stayed in the position we’d occupied for ninety minutes or more, I decided I might try another composition, and it was one that delivered my favourite moments of the day. The sea had by now taken on a shade of green that had to be seen to be believed, and the polariser intensified the colours throughout the scene. Those dabs of soft orange light continued to play at the edge of the sea, and from this much lower position I felt closer to everything. The weather was now coming straight at me, rather than from the side, and I knew that as I took this image it would be among the last moments before the payoff came in the form of an almighty bristling shower coming straight towards us.
Ten minutes later, we were back at the car park, shaking the rainwater from our clothes and camera bags. It had been an excellent reunion shoot. You know it’s been a good shoot when you’re soaked. And when you come away with two entirely different shots that tick your boxes, you’re always going to go home with a big wet grin from ear to ear. Even if the local chippy is closed.