Balancing Act
Normally Lee and I would be shaking hands with Lloyd on arrival, but at that precise moment, all three of us were balancing precariously on dinosaur eggs. Well not really dinosaur eggs, but enormous oval granite boulders, some of which have a habit of wobbling furiously if you're not paying attention. The beach here consists almost entirely of them - apart from the deep band of seaweed that has spread itself evenly across its width towards the cliffs since I was last here. As for the cliffs - standing anywhere near them really isn’t recommended, neither on top nor below. After you've struggled onto the beach, gaze up and you’ll see for yourself how even the smallest straw on the camel’s back of erosion would bring a deadly volume crashing down on top of your head. It’s never been an easy beach to navigate, and it’s gradually getting more challenging.
Lloyd was already here by the time we arrived, sitting behind his tripod in front of a composition he’d been lining up with his phone the previous afternoon. Our visiting friend was staying within walking distance of the celebrated cobbles, and although he told us it was a holiday with his wife rather than one of his regular autumn pilgrimages to Cornwall, he’d brought the camera along to keep himself entertained. He’d arrived in a pair of wellies that were sending me a radioactive shade of green with envy - Vibram soles on wellies for goodness sake! “What else would you ever need?” I hear you ask. Needless to say, by the time we stopped at the pub on the way home I was comparing the options on your favourite shopping app. Ever since that story of the cracked polariser from Vestrahorn, Mr Bezos is always on the phone asking me to promote stuff. Probably.
Porth Nanven is one of those places that I think I go to all the time, but when I looked through my archives, the last visit was eighteen months ago, almost exactly to the day. Just after my granddaughter Sennen was born. That afternoon, I drove off down to Sennen Cove in tribute, bought a rum and raisin flavour ice cream, sat on a rock feeling all misty eyed about becoming a grandad, decided there was nothing doing on the photography front and headed here instead. So my last visit was an afterthought - and guess what? Not one of the forty-five raw files has been anywhere near the editing suite. Forty-four if you discount the one with two of my fingers blighting the frame. Either I was reminding myself I’d just done a twin shot focus stack or I was commenting on what I thought of my own photography that day. Prior to that, I’d been here in the middle of the summer, just a couple of weeks before Lee and I set the compass for Iceland. Only two of those had been dragged through the software, and they were hardly inspiring.
So what is it with Porth Nanven? As locations go, even for Cornwall it’s pretty well unique with its blanket of dinosaur eggs, shaped and smoothed to perfection by countless Atlantic seasons. But perhaps the first paragraph tells the truth in part. Add the fact that the boulders at the water's edge are generally covered in messy tangles of seaweed, the beach is often full of footprints, both human and canine, the movement of the tide changes your carefully thought out compositions every five minutes, and maybe that’s why I don’t come here so often these days. Break an ankle on those cobbles and there’s no phone signal to help you out either. What I have concluded (and I’m not alone in this) is that it’s best to go at low tide, when the shoreline stays roughly in one place for a slightly longer period of time, and if you’re lucky, you might get some untouched sand in front of you. Although you'll probably be picking stray lumps of seaweed out of the way once you’ve set up your shot, whilst trying to keep off the sand. You can always spot the photographers here. We hop from boulder to boulder like oversized penguins, trying desperately to avoid leaving footprints.
And then it’s just a question of trying to maintain balance. Not only on the cobbles in your Vibram soled wellies, but also in your ever changing compositions. In two and a half hours I raced through a number of them, some that I liked, while others looked as if they might topple in either direction when I examined them on the big screen at home.
I came away with some more shots that almost worked - new ideas to return to next time. And it won’t be eighteen months away either.
Balancing Act
Normally Lee and I would be shaking hands with Lloyd on arrival, but at that precise moment, all three of us were balancing precariously on dinosaur eggs. Well not really dinosaur eggs, but enormous oval granite boulders, some of which have a habit of wobbling furiously if you're not paying attention. The beach here consists almost entirely of them - apart from the deep band of seaweed that has spread itself evenly across its width towards the cliffs since I was last here. As for the cliffs - standing anywhere near them really isn’t recommended, neither on top nor below. After you've struggled onto the beach, gaze up and you’ll see for yourself how even the smallest straw on the camel’s back of erosion would bring a deadly volume crashing down on top of your head. It’s never been an easy beach to navigate, and it’s gradually getting more challenging.
Lloyd was already here by the time we arrived, sitting behind his tripod in front of a composition he’d been lining up with his phone the previous afternoon. Our visiting friend was staying within walking distance of the celebrated cobbles, and although he told us it was a holiday with his wife rather than one of his regular autumn pilgrimages to Cornwall, he’d brought the camera along to keep himself entertained. He’d arrived in a pair of wellies that were sending me a radioactive shade of green with envy - Vibram soles on wellies for goodness sake! “What else would you ever need?” I hear you ask. Needless to say, by the time we stopped at the pub on the way home I was comparing the options on your favourite shopping app. Ever since that story of the cracked polariser from Vestrahorn, Mr Bezos is always on the phone asking me to promote stuff. Probably.
Porth Nanven is one of those places that I think I go to all the time, but when I looked through my archives, the last visit was eighteen months ago, almost exactly to the day. Just after my granddaughter Sennen was born. That afternoon, I drove off down to Sennen Cove in tribute, bought a rum and raisin flavour ice cream, sat on a rock feeling all misty eyed about becoming a grandad, decided there was nothing doing on the photography front and headed here instead. So my last visit was an afterthought - and guess what? Not one of the forty-five raw files has been anywhere near the editing suite. Forty-four if you discount the one with two of my fingers blighting the frame. Either I was reminding myself I’d just done a twin shot focus stack or I was commenting on what I thought of my own photography that day. Prior to that, I’d been here in the middle of the summer, just a couple of weeks before Lee and I set the compass for Iceland. Only two of those had been dragged through the software, and they were hardly inspiring.
So what is it with Porth Nanven? As locations go, even for Cornwall it’s pretty well unique with its blanket of dinosaur eggs, shaped and smoothed to perfection by countless Atlantic seasons. But perhaps the first paragraph tells the truth in part. Add the fact that the boulders at the water's edge are generally covered in messy tangles of seaweed, the beach is often full of footprints, both human and canine, the movement of the tide changes your carefully thought out compositions every five minutes, and maybe that’s why I don’t come here so often these days. Break an ankle on those cobbles and there’s no phone signal to help you out either. What I have concluded (and I’m not alone in this) is that it’s best to go at low tide, when the shoreline stays roughly in one place for a slightly longer period of time, and if you’re lucky, you might get some untouched sand in front of you. Although you'll probably be picking stray lumps of seaweed out of the way once you’ve set up your shot, whilst trying to keep off the sand. You can always spot the photographers here. We hop from boulder to boulder like oversized penguins, trying desperately to avoid leaving footprints.
And then it’s just a question of trying to maintain balance. Not only on the cobbles in your Vibram soled wellies, but also in your ever changing compositions. In two and a half hours I raced through a number of them, some that I liked, while others looked as if they might topple in either direction when I examined them on the big screen at home.
I came away with some more shots that almost worked - new ideas to return to next time. And it won’t be eighteen months away either.