Le navire croisait à sa vitesse maximum, le vent soufflait fort et nous étions quelques uns à attendre le coucher de soleil sur la mer.

The ship was cruising at maximum speed, the wind was blowing hard and there were a few of us waiting for the sunset over the sea.

Not forgetting I was in the Tropics when I took this. The perfume was just as lovely as they floated within a bowl of water. Captured in Bali, Indonesia.

Sin lugar a dudas el lugar más bestia de Euskadi y alrededores es este del cañón de Delika desde donde se puede ver cómo te viene encima el salto del Nervión, al que no le hace falta presentación. Madrugamos @jorgereyazabal , @rafadiez78 y yo mismo para intentar pillar color en el cielo, pero la previsión se retrasó y nos llevamos los picos teñidos del color del sol. Cuando llegamos hasta allí me llevé una grata sorpresa al encontrarme con @jesusrsrc . Otro tan loco como nosotros

#estaes_burgos_

#sonyalphasclub

#master_shots

#fever_euskadi

#planet_earth_shots

#addicted_to_basque

#nature_focus_on

#jaw_dropping_shots

#paisajefotisimo

#photofoci

#sunset_ig

#waterearthpix

#shotzdelight

#hubs_united

#special_shots

#moods_in_frame

#moodygrams

#_sunsetstyle

#special_shots

#longexpoelite

#1x

#ig_shotz_sunset

#water_captures

#ig_shotz_le

#fever_waters

#longexposure

#tufotonatgeo

#natgeoyourshot

#earth_shotz

#fotora_org

#longexpo_spain

Rather understandably, the steady trickle of visitors that make it to this lonely outpost tend to look in another direction. More often than not they point their cameras and phones in a southerly direction, taking in the grand vista of Haifoss and the huge canyon that leads away towards a distant coast. Here, at the edge of the place where the roads lead to Iceland's mysterious and untamed interior, you can get a sense of being completely alone, or at least you can when you choose to ignore the dozen or so other parties that came here instead of the leading Golden Circle attractions at Gulfoss and Strokkur.

Granni, the companion waterfall to the huge drop of Haifoss, is equally worthy of inspection, set under a grey moody sky against the dark brown slabs cast in sturdy layers of basalt columns. Here, the bright white cascade crashes and contrasts its way through sombre yet handsome tones towards the canyon floor. Contrasting tones that caught my eye and made me feel the shot was worth taking. Words don't really do justice to the sense of being here of course. At a right angle to the central element of your view, the preamble to the main fall is worthy of a capture in its own right, given enough time to explore the area more fully. How close you can get to it without falling into oblivion I can't say, so please don't write in if you or your loved ones suffer an unfortunate moment there.

Quite why we didn't get closer to the base of Granni during our meanderings through the bottom of the canyon tells a tale in itself perhaps. You can never have regrets, but I do wonder at the things we sometimes leave out - in this case driven by the obsession with capturing a focus stack or two from the base of the rainbow clad Haifoss. A few minutes of further clambering would have taken us around a corner and much closer to this beautiful creation by Mother Nature's architectural department at the canyon head. Even on what had been up until then a dry sunny day, we'd have probably taken a bit of a hosing by the competing drifts of spray, but if would have been a soaking worth suffering just to feel the rawness, the remoteness, and the utter grandeur of such a spectacular sight.

It was only after a period of ascent driven oxygen deprivation that we gazed back down towards the browns, greens and greys in front of us, where I took what I then saw as an afterthought - or a record shot as we sometimes like to call the creations that we don't expect to make the light of day. Of course, I took in the big view to the south - the one that features the 128 metre drop of Haifoss and the valley beyond towards the south coast. I have a small collection of raw files from there that might only produce a record shot - but then again you never know. I don't, because they're in one of that majority of untouched folders I mentioned in my last post.

So if you're heading this way and taking your 4 wheel drive across the bumpy track from road 32 to here, don't forget to take in the Lesser Spotted Granni. She's worth pointing your camera at with all manner of focal lengths. You might just be surprised to find an image that you weren't quite expecting on your SD card later.

Ok, so based on the title this should be a pretty short story for once. Like all the other coastal photographers I've spent an entire winter waiting for something exciting to happen, only to be foiled by a near total absence of drama in the ocean. I did read something online about the reasons for there having been no named storms here this season, but all I can remember is a reference to "La Nina," who appears to be the sister of "El Nino." Or something like that - I always switch off when I attempt to read anything vaguely scientific. Suffice to say, we've seen little in the way of what I think of as a "normal" sea on the north coast during this unusually windless winter. Maybe my timing was wrong - although on consulting Magic Seaweed (and now also the Ventusky app - thanks Ade), the water has been as flat as a pancake on every single outing. I've all but given up for now.

But what I have managed to make some sense of came from the November trip to Lanzarote. The north west coast of the island is a veritable hotbed of Atlantic rollers wherever you choose to park the car and sit and gaze at the ocean. We'd come here to El Golfo to inspect one of the better known highlights in the form of the bright green sea lagoon, stranded on a black sandy beach at the edge of the Timanfaya National Park. Ali and I had strolled up the path to a clifftop view populated by huge numbers of sightseers. But in the middle of the afternoon, with people all around me and glaring light, the camera didn't make it out of the bag. I didn't even take a phone snap. "I'll come back up here later when it's quiet," I thought to myself.

We agreed we'd wander down to the beach to explore the rocks, watch the sea and wait for the sky to begin to change colour. And then I decided to bring the long lens out and make for a protected cluster of rocks at the eastern side of the beach from where I had a side on view. A side on view that seemed to solve a number of troublesome wave tog issues. A nice dark background, a zoom into the clear blue heart of each incomer, and best of all, a warm crest of sunlight hitting the white flumes of spray and backlighting them. Or sidelighting them from my angle if you like. In this light at 330mm I could even afford to rein in the aperture - just a little bit. Burst mode, ISO up a squeak or two, switch on the focus tracking and trust the rest to fortune.

This was fun! The crash of each wave would be accompanied by a shutter whir as my camera tried to keep up, and it wasn't long before a stream of promising looking results began to appear on the back of my screen. So much so, that instead of the six or seven hundred shots I've collected in similar sea conditions at home, I took just ninety-four here. I think this was my favourite, although they all look so similar that I might be wrong. I was pretty happy with this, although inevitably it lacks the moody portent of a Rachel Talibart, an Edd Allen or a Mark Dobson sea storm special. I forgot to go back to photograph the lagoon afterwards. It didn't really seem to matter. I'd managed to further my experience of what does and what doesn't work in an area of photography that has long intrigued and eluded me, and I was happy with the small advances I'd made.

So whether we do get a lone storm before winter bids us farewell is very likely to be academic for me in any case, because next week I'm heading off down this way again, to the neighbouring island of Fuerteventura, where hopefully I'll get another crack at some Atlantic wave action. And some warm sunshine would be nice if you don't mind as well please! I'm done with being cold for now. Winter is always just a bit too long in these Northern latitudes I think.

This peaceful duck rests on a rock near a body of water, capturing the very essence of serenity in a natural setting.

Hyères les Palmiers. Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region.

The soft water captured in this long exposure does nothing to show how loud it was standing in front of Wainui Falls. The water falls about 20 metres so you can imagine the sound is a little deafening. No tripod so my camera is sitting precariously on rocks. In hindsight I wish I had propped it up a little but never mind, live and learn.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainui_Falls

“ Never lose your sense of wonder.” - unknown

Today we had some sun finally. Although we still do not have any significant snow, we do have ice at last! I used a long lens to capture some neat ice formations on our casual drive along back roads. It was wonderful to sit by the peaceful water and soak up the warm sun with just a bit of chill in the air. It was wonderful to see the results of the sun on the reflections in the ice and water capturing the blues from the sky above.

Loch Raven Reservoir

Maybe this was the lull during Super Saturday. Remember Super Saturday? It was the day when the Snaefellsnes peninsula was our world and we explored it royally. From mid morning at Grundarfoss until after sunset under an enormous pink swirling cloud at the black church of Budir we stopped here there and everywhere on a day of maximum input and an output that will have me reaching into the archives for months, possibly years to come. I have no less than eighteen separate folders full of RAW files from that finest of days, some of which contain large numbers of images to pore over, while a few, such as the group I took from a layby on the road to Hellnar have just two or three files, little more than handheld snapshots.

By the time we arrived here, we’d already had a very agreeable few hours at the lesser known Svodufoss on the northwest corner of the peninsula, where we’d bathed in autumnal sunshine under the majestic white peak of Snaefellsjokull. We’d paused briefly to photograph the church of Ingjaldsholl in front of the glacier, before sauntering happily along the remote and empty Utnesvegur, passing a discarded landscape of twisted forms. A crater here, a lava field there. For now we were just driving through the landscape, enjoying the privilege of witnessing this extraordinary peninsula. We’d stop at Arnarstapi and photograph the white house again next, we decided. But for a moment we’d take that side road to Hellnar and pause in the layby for a snack, from where we could gaze down at the church we’d abandoned all intentions of photographing twenty-four hours earlier. I’d seen some very agreeable images of the subject in these pages, but from wherever you looked it was surrounded by clutter, and the most compelling pictures I’d found for reference had been simplified by a blanket of snow. Reluctantly we’d agreed that there probably wasn’t a shot here for this trip. I took a couple of snaps with the long lens and duly filed the results, instantly forgetting the episode as we moved on to the next stop where there was an already tried and tested composition to revisit. The lull was over, and the feeding frenzy of Super Saturday had resumed.

It was only much later, in one of those moments when I decided that while I wanted to play around with some shots in the editing suite, I wasn’t in the mood for sifting through a large number of candidates. I wanted simple, and simple didn’t come easier than a folder with only three RAW files, two of which appeared to be almost identical. The shortlisting would take approximately zero seconds. Maybe I could declutter the space around the church? Another monochrome conversion with a bit of contrast would help to simplify the scene, and perhaps there was an image hidden in plain sight that was worth persevering for. Just a quick half hour before I moved away from the computer and did something else with my Sunday afternoon, I thought to myself. And so I started to tinker, gradually removing one distraction after another with varying degrees of success, until the white church stood alone in its space against the quiet ocean. A dodge, a burn or several, a pair of levels and curves adjustments and the shapes of distant mountains somewhere closer to Reykjavik appeared across the water. Now an image that initially offered little promise began to take shape. It still wasn’t one I planned to share – at least not until the moment that I began to rather like what I was looking at. Somehow, an image had evolved from a messy starting point and I was happy.

It makes me wonder what else I’ve got lying around in my saved files; what images are hovering one step away from the dustbin of eternity that might have a hidden promise just waiting to be hatched from chaos. When there are so many fantastic moments still waiting to be captured, it may be a while before any more of the lesser lights appear, but anything is possible. “Never delete anything – just in case,” seems to be the lesson I’ve learned, not that I often do. You never know when you might see something in an unloved snapshot that you overlooked in the first place.

Note the water spray through out the picture.

Full moon on July 13, 2022 and its reflection on the water... Captured from my tripod as I sat on a sandy beach.

That red eye. That sharp bill. That liquid gold water.

Captured this evening at the marina...

Unas montañas que se intuían lejísimos (la foto está hecha a 600mm). Sierra de la demanda desde Urkiola. Cubiertas completamente de nieve y flotando sobre un inmenso mar de nubes. Yo sueño pensado que son los Andes 😂😂. Where Rachel, where?? 😂😂. Con la compañía siempre bien de @grulla_otonal_photo @alaingarciago y @polophototime

#sonyalphasclub

#master_shots

#fever_euskadi

#planet_earth_shots

#addicted_to_basque

#nature_focus_on

#jaw_dropping_shots

#paisajefotisimo

#photofoci

#sunset_ig

#waterearthpix

#shotzdelight

#hubs_united

#special_shots

#moods_in_frame

#moodygrams

#_sunsetstyle

#special_shots

#1x

#water_captures

#ig_shotz_le

#tufotonatgeo

#natgeoyourshot

#earth_shotz

#fotora_org

#snowmountain

#mountains

#fever_natura

#total_nature_spain

#total_nature_europe

#total_nature_euskadi

Elan Valley Wales. Craig Goch Dam.

"Yes, that looks like an engine," Dave was looking satisfied as he peered under the bonnet of the car he was thinking about buying - my car in fact. I nodded sagely in agreement. "It does indeed appear to be an engine." I sometimes wonder why we need mechanics when two bumbling amateurs can race so quickly to such conclusive positions as this. I was just pleased to discover that my little Fiat hadn't spent the last ten years being propelled by an enormous rubber band that I might one day have to rewind with an industrial winch and the aid of a championship winning tug of war team. I think that in those ten years I looked underneath the bonnet no more than half a dozen times. Of course nowadays car engines are just boxes under the bonnet that you plug a computer into if you want to make sure everything is OK. Nobody like us can actually work on them anymore. The fact that everyone teases me and calls me "Captain Slow" because I don't drive everywhere at 150 miles per hour has probably helped to keep the last decade of driving completely trouble free.

All of this irrelevance had found me rethinking my weekend plans. I'd promised myself a Saturday evening alone at Godrevy after a long week at work, and I'd promised Ali that once I'd advanced beyond the need to stand on a clifftop pointing a camera at a lighthouse, I'd reserve the rest of the weekend for spending time with her. Now Sunday would be spent finding temporary insurance for a car I'd not driven in five months, a morning valet service and an afternoon trip to the mechanic for the MOT. Knowing I'd need Ali's help for that I suggested we spend Saturday evening together - although in practice that meant me heading off in one direction with the camera and her in the other with the dog. There would be a rendezvous at the car at dusk, and it was accepted that I would be later than I'd said I would be. I'm afraid that usually happens because once I've arrived here; even the fact that night is drawing in doesn't generally deter me from taking one last image - and then another.

I arrived in this spot at high tide, the advancing waves scattering a group of startled oystercatchers from the rocks in front of me. The sea was doing beautiful things in powder blue tones and I took lots of exposures, trying to catch the water pouring of the rocks in the centre ground. It was my first time back here since lockdown and it felt great to be back on my favourite stomping ground.

I have a week off work to look forward to now, so it's inevitable that I'll be here again very soon. It's really not an easy place to tear yourself away from.

Besides the obvious, there are certain benefits to being what some of my former colleagues would refer to as "careful" with money. The more kindly former colleagues that is, I should add. Others wasted no time in coming up with rather more abusive terms for my steadfast refusal to throw away my hard earned on fast cars, champagne lunches and visits to Monte Carlo, but I would just smile and remind them that they'd still be working long after I'd retired. That tended to either stop them in their tracks with dumbstruck expressions, or had the opposite effect of exacerbating the tirade. Still, I'd just smile as I opened my home made cheese salad while whichever friend it was lavished another fiver on a disappointing looking sandwich and an overpriced coffee.

I often earned similar brickbats for refusing to join in the incessant charge along the highways and byways, driving at a benign pace rather than hammering along the outside lane at eighty-five miles an hour. I prefer to watch the fuel consumption reading rather than the speedometer you see. When I was younger, and very probably heading for a midlife crisis, I owned a white Vauxhall Astra GTE. It was very fast and it made me drive like a fool. It also used a lot of petrol. Now I have a modest Skoda that can get halfway across the country and back to Luton Airport without me having to refill the tank.

So there are aspects of Iceland that suit me, despite the fact that things are generally quite expensive in comparison to where I live. The jaw dropping landscape is something of course that very much ticks my boxes, but while many visitors seem to struggle with the fifty-five miles per hour speed limit, I don't. I simply pop the rental car into cruise control, set the speed and steer contentedly through the beauty around us - trying to concentrate on the road of course - the scenery can be distracting.

Other aspects of Iceland can be a trifle worrisome though. Last time we were here, we parked freely and quite legitimately on a patchy pull in, before walking the short distance to the triple waterfall of Kirkjufellsfoss. It was close to midnight under the twenty-four hour daylight glow, and only a small number of togs were around to compete for position with. On the other side of the pull in was another bit of scrubby ground beside the beach where we could also have parked for free. But three years on, things have changed. A brand new car park with number plate recognition cameras awaits the visitor, and swiftly relieves them of a thousand krona, regardless of how long they're planning to stay for. Needless to say, the waterfall was surrounded by a large number of visitors, many of them armed with tripods and cameras, all after that classic shot of Kirkjufell that looks so familiar. Admittedly there was still a pull in nearby, but there was also a sign that suggested our car might get towed away if we parked there, so we didn't stop for long.

But on the plus side, this aversion to parting with money for no good reason eventually added some unexpected shots to the catalogue, including my previous post, "Night Traffic." Our irritation at the prospect of coughing up the cash had taken us to a generous lay-by overlooking the sea. From there it was a leisurely fifteen minute amble along a footpath back towards the waterfall, and directly past the lake, where Kirkjufell gives away mirrorlike reflections on still days without charging a bean. And when the sky is doing interesting things at the end of a wet and grungy day, that seems like a reward worth grabbing with both hands.

We took a number of shots here, starting well before sunset and pushing on into the blue hour. I'd had a plan to revisit a patch of marshy ground I'd found the previous evening, but the presence of a growing number of togs along the bank of the lake appealed to my better nature as I wondered how easily they'd be able to clone me out of their sunsets. So here I stayed, enjoying the fact that I hadn't paid a thousand crowns for the privilege. It wasn't a bad spot from which to watch the day ebb away.

A male belted Kingfisher surveying his territory

These birds watch for fish from a high snag or other perch and then plunge head first into the water, capturing small fish in their bill.

Photographed at Jarvis Creek, Hilton Head Island, SC, USA

MANY THANKS FOR YOUR VIEWS, COMMENTS AND FAVES

VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!

Running in the beach water. Capture of reflection and the movement

Take-off over rough water. Captured at Ding Darling NWR in January 2020. Thanks for viewing!

© Dennis Zaebst All Rights Reserved

The day we moved to base camp three was always going to be a bit of an adventure. Now I look back at the notes, which confirm how long the journey was, especially in a land where the speed limits are positively pedestrian. From the Efra Sel Hostel at Fludir in the Golden Circle, we'd be driving 439km, or for five and a half hours as Google Maps informed me, eventually reaching the loneliest outpost of the trip at Stafafell Cottages, roughly halfway between the highlights on the road from Vestrahorn to Eystrahorn. Once we'd thrown in a lunch stop at Vik and decided upon which of the many interim attractions we'd visit along the way, an extra three hours or more would be added to the long day of driving ahead. We even pulled very briefly into a rammed car park at Skogafoss, just for a recce rather than anything more immersive at this stage. Here we were greeted by a rainbow that spread itself across the base of the waterfall, much as the one at Haifoss had done the day before. But unlike the far more remote Haifoss, the space was full of people, so much so that we didn't even take the cameras out of the packs. I don't think I even bothered with a phone snap.

Driving from west to east along the south coast of Iceland is an experience you're unlikely to forget, especially on a clear day when the landscape opens up ahead of you in full glorious technicolour. The further you proceed, the more magnificent it seems to become as on the left hand side mountains emerge from the horizon to greet you, ever more foreboding as you go. On this clear sunny day, we were only a few minutes out of Vik before the Vatnajokull glacier, which covers eight percent of the entire surface of Iceland rose to beckon us across the plains ahead, where it sat for the better part of two hours as we slowly reeled it in towards us. As we made the final approach, the long icy fingers of Skaftafell and Svinafellsjokull reached down towards the ground from their peaks to say hello, inviting us to stop at the latter, a decision mainly driven by the fact that we didn't have to pay to park there.

Back on the road, resisting the temptation to stop as the tell-tale single span suspension bridge announced we were passing the glacier lagoon at Jokulsarlon, we pressed on, fully in the knowledge that the chances of a sunset shoot were rapidly diminishing. It was a situation made ever more frustrating by the arrival of what might have been the most appealing golden hour we'd had so far. The last hour brought soft warm tones to the front lit mountains ahead, by which time we knew the only opportunity we'd get that evening was to head straight down the track to Batman's lair.

I'd only discovered the existence of Brunnhorn after booking our accommodation, so I was delighted to see that a lesser known highlight of the region was quite literally just across the road from our home for the next four nights. At this moment I'm going to allow you to pause for a period of up to seven nanoseconds while you attempt to deduce for yourself why it's commonly know as "Batman Mountain." Got it? We'll move on then. As you can see, by the time we finally got to our spot, we had moved convincingly into the depths of the blue hour, and although we still weren't quite over the disappointment of not having arrived even fifteen minutes earlier, there was still a shot waiting to be stolen from the approaching night. In the stillness of the evening, a long exposure delivered the reflections and soft peachy tones of the horizon that made the moment one worth recording.

In retrospect, I'm now quite content that we didn't arrive here with enough time to go elsewhere. We'd have probably pushed on to Eystrahorn, where we spent the following afternoon and evening with a degree of success. Although we came back here a couple of times as an aperitif to the main events at either Eystrahorn or Vestrahorn that would follow, I'm not so sure we'd have dedicated an entire evening shoot to it. So, in this way, Batman had his moment in the spotlight, bathed in blue reflections before the dusk vanished into darkness. After all, there's always a positive to be found when you reflect on things later.

Sunlit stream waters, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Nikon D7500, Sigma 18-300, ISO 400, f/6.3, 300mm, 1/200s

Of course I knew exactly what I was going to see. Half a dozen or more YouTube feeds had prepared me for the view, and beyond that quite a few of you had evidently been here too. And even by Iceland’s celebrity A list standards, this was a location that I knew was going to have my eyes springing from their sockets and bouncing about on the ground like table tennis balls. Arriving here in July as we did, most visitors were standing just to the left at the spot where the nearest puffin activity was taking place a few yards further away, which did at least mean that despite the numbers present, there wasn’t a jostle of togs trying to shoot the epic view in front of them.

By now, Lee and I had driven most of the 1,100 odd miles around the ring road in our rented bright yellow VW camper, to which you can add the Snaefellsnes detour. Great swathes of the north and east of the country had been bypassed on an eternally dreary and damp afternoon in our eagerness to get to the south coast and its collection of landscape jewels. Only the previous morning we’d waited in hope at Eystrahorn, over two hundred miles to the east, and then Vestrahorn before heading into the small town of Hofn for supplies. Both locations had remained elusive, making themselves completely invisible under grey shrouds and foiling our ambitions completely. From there we’d headed west to overnight beside the unworldly Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and take photographs among the chunks of ice washed back onto the black sands of Diamond Beach at midnight under an endless veil of soft rain. The following morning we continued west, to a place where we joined the crowds on the narrow footpaths above the canyon of Fjadrarglufur before arriving sometime later in the small metropolis of Vik, hungry, tired, excited, and brimming with aromas that made other humans maintain their distance. By now, we were in a condition that only two middle aged unchecked males can achieve after five days on the road, and made straight for the local swimming pool to shower and wallow in the warm water, contemplating the eminence of Reynisfjall in front of us. Later, rested, watered and decidedly less pungent, we wandered onto the beach to photograph the stacks from the east, before hiking up the mountain to see what we could see from the top. In fact we took a picture or two while we were up there as well. Talk about whistle stop adventures! Twenty-two hours of daylight certainly gives you the chance to take a lot of photos, that’s for sure.

Even after that the day’s activities still had one final outing lying in wait as we drove a few miles further west to stand on the clifftop at Dyrholaey from where we could gaze happily at the vista before us. That classic view, so often photographed was about to become the subject of yet another viewfinder or two. In the foreground stood the Shrek-like monolith of Arnardrangur, the white tide washing lazily across the sand and around its imposing circumference. At the other end of the long black strip of Reynisfjara were the outlandish and huge sea stacks of Reynisdrangar, they in turn dwarfed by the enormous flat shelf of land jutting out into the ocean that we’d climbed just a few hours earlier. With a time machine we might have seen ourselves a mile or two away, squinting back into the low sun. For a while we watched the puffins and planned a pit stop here for the following day with the long lenses. Everyone loves a puffin don’t they? You can see mine in this album if you feel moved to do so. No pressure, but our hero does have a beak full of sand eels; just saying.

And those two paragraphs pretty much encapsulate the experience of our first trip to Iceland three summers ago. Non stop driving interspersed with non stop photography and only a couple of visits to the pool complex at Vik and a strangely spontaneous whale watching trip out of the handsome harbour of Husavik to break the rhythm. In a single week we managed to come away with images from more than twenty locations, some of them successful missions, others abject failures. Add to this the album full of random phone snapshots from downtown Reykjavik to the subarctic northern bays of Akureyri and Husavik; from the remote sulphurous moonscape of Hverir in the northeast of nowhere to the random red chair by the roadside near Hofn. I often look back at those rapidly composed phone snaps and grin at the memories. It’s the way of things when you only have a week and there are so many things you daren’t miss. We had at least managed to visit every place on the itinerary we’d made and agreed upon, and found a couple of unexpected gems to add to it too.

And now, Iceland awaits our return visit. This time we have double the days available and rather fewer miles to cover. With four bases there will be opportunities to return to some favoured locations at least once or twice, and catch them in different moods. As before, a list of beauty spots has been drafted, some of them brand new, while others will come forward to greet us like old acquaintances. Beside the utter failures of Eystrahorn and Vestrahorn in the south east, there are places where justice wasn’t fully done as we rushed hither and thither across the barren yet bewildering landscape. Kirkjufell – what on earth was I up to there? Need to do better this time. And then there are places like this, where I was happy enough with the image I came away with, but I’m in no doubt that there are more compositions to be had both on and around this headland. Maybe we’ll even manage to drag ourselves out early enough to capture a sunrise here.

And do you know what? We might even get to see the aurora. Of course lots of non togs assume that's all we're going for, although in truth we'd barely considered it. But it's very much a possibility in September so the books tell us. I even know which website to check now. I’d better start practising some night time photography again then. Now then, focus manually on the distant lamppost………….

Skogafoss, one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Iceland. It certainly didn't disappoint. I even got sprayed with water capturing this shot from this distance

In Berlin, close to Mercedes Benz Arena, I found these fountains on a very hot day. Seems like people get crazy.

One guy posing for a foto, lifting his bicycle and kids playing with the water :-)

Captured with my analog Leica M3, loaded with a Kodak T-Max 400 Development details on FilmDev

I don't think I'll ever feel that business is complete at any location. Not even at the so often photographed lighthouse at Godrevy, eleven miles down the road that appears in a disproportionate percentage of my posts as well as the avatar I use here and elsewhere. I'll never capture the perfect shot- and if somehow that happened, I suspect some form of disillusionment would follow - but at the same time there are pictures that make us happy as we develop them into a pleasing final result. Especially so when we return to a place for the second time to find the star of the show has actually bothered to put in an appearance. As Lee said to a fellow tog on the beach here "Well I've been to Vestrahorn twice, but this is the first time I've seen it." The young English photographer apparently furrowed his brow questioningly, waiting for a further explanation. "When we came here in 2019, the entire mountain range was covered in a blanket of cloud that went all the way down to ground level," Lee continued. "We stayed here for about three hours, hoping things might change, but they only got worse, and we needed to move on."

Lee's retold tale took us back to what was without question the most disappointing episode of that whistle stop tour three years earlier, the only other visit either of us had made to Iceland when we'd circled the entire country in a bright yellow VW campervan named Brian. The day beforehand we'd driven from the far north for hours and hours through increasingly bad weather and disappearing visibility. The mysterious southeast corner between Egilsstadir and Djupivogur remained almost entirely a mystery, the occasional hint of untouched fjord looming silently out of the mist as we made our way south. We arrived at Eystrahorn, just forty minutes away to spend the small hours hoping for a change in the weather, but the morning only delivered more of the same. And when you're attempting to encircle a nation of this size in six days where road conditions and speed limits are designed to keep progress at the steadiest of paces, you can only give a location so much time before you have to move on. By the time we arrived at Vestrahorn and paid the entrance fee to get down to the celebrated viewpoint we'd dreamed of seeing for so long, its total absence from the scene was received in the manner of a firm blow being delivered to the solar plexus. We weren't happy. Ironically, I did eventually turn the camera around to take what was later received on Flickr as one of the most successful images from the trip in "The Life of Brian." I've shamelessly added a link to the bottom of this story as a plug. Later, we moved on to Hofn and then to Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and Diamond Beach, which happily delivered happier results.

So if nothing else happened on this return to the scene, what we wanted to do was actually see Vestrahorn in all of its magnificence. Whether we'd get any worthwhile images under such a bland sky was a question in point, but as we were staying nearby for four nights, we'd get at least a couple of stabs at laying the spectre of that July morning 2019 to rest. The sense of anticipation in the car as we made our way along the sometimes bumpy track from the main road was infinitely palpable. Every corner turned found us expecting to see the iconic view at last, but what we hadn't realised was that you can only really see Vestrahorn once you head out over the causeway towards the dunes. If we'd had a glimpse on the previous expedition we'd have known that. "Where is it?" I screeched excitedly as I drove slightly more urgently than I should have done. "Have they moved it since last time, just to annoy us?"

Of course, it was there. Why after all would the custodians remove it when they do such a roaring trade charging entrants 900kr a head for the pleasure of seeing the place. We can all rant about being charged to stare at a mountain range, but I find that if you've done your research and know the only way you're going to get a good view is to reconcile yourself to the fact you'll be parting with cash to do so, it at least makes things easier. In fact, we happily parted with the fee on two consecutive days to be here, and I've no doubt we'd have gone again given the time to do so. After all, what a place it is when you finally get to see the mountain range that's featured in countless images for yourself. If there were architecture prizes for natural landscapes, this one would definitely be on a shortlist for a major prize. And when you do arrive, you're immediately faced with so many opportunities. You can shoot reflections over a tidal lagoon, or you can choose a golden grassed dune to perch upon or behind as you try to eliminate the billion footprints on the volcanic black sand. You can zoom in to only include one part of the range, but it would be rude not to take the wide angle lens and consign the entire majesty of it to your SD card. And then you can head down to the water and shoot the incoming tide as big sweeps of white water leave streaks across the shoreline. I could happily spend days here, learning the location and capturing it in every imaginable mood. Even the fact that every tog in southeast Iceland will be competing for elbow room here with you as the light intensifies seems tolerable to me. As I stood in this spot, opening the shutter again and again, earning a welly boot full of seawater for my efforts, I was surrounded by a collection of clackers from across the globe, each seemingly lost in their own happy worlds. Some would smile in the knowledge that they were spending hard earned precious time in one of the world's great photography meccas, while others stood behind their tripods with fixed expressions, knowing this might be their only chance to return from this magical land with an image worthy of their wall or their online gallery.

In this image, which was the sixteenth edition of the original, I found myself sacrificing the immediate foreground drama continued by that big sweep of seawater, by cropping the bottom of the shot to bring the viewer closer into the scene. It definitely falls into the "best viewed large" category, so I hope you've switched the computer on to take a closer look. The almost featureless sky was rescued by a yellow sunset glow to the west, while a couple of tufts nestled pleasingly atop the highest peaks on Vestrahorn. And that foreground wash of water towards me made the shot an easy selection from the many I took of this wide angle view. I've got to confess I'm pretty pleased with the result, and the ghost of 2019 has been happily banished from the back catalogue of despondency. Vestrahorn had made its peace and repaid us for that dismal afternoon three years ago. Happy? Well, yes, I rather think I am this time.

The Life of Brian -

www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/49476904751/in/album-...

Following my previous post, I'm going to keep the Canarian theme running as Ali and I make our final preparations to head this way again later this week. After all, why not whet the appetite with a bit of stolen sunshine as the mercury drops again in the UK - one final blast of winter before spring finally comes a calling. Hopefully by the time we return, things will have warmed up a bit and the garden will be showing a few more signs of life.

It's been a fun few days - yesterday I saw both of my grandchildren in one afternoon. Not together sadly, as my daughter was celebrating an elderly in law's 80th. But I did get to witness my son jumping into a freezing sea at Falmouth, sans wetsuit as in my arms I held his five week old son and told him what a crazy fool his father is. Later, I saw my five month old granddaughter, who seemed to be almost as transfixed by Liverpool's seven nil defeat of Manchester United as I was. And I was introduced to the hitherto unknown cocktail known as a salted caramel hot cross bun by my daughter in law. I've put in a bulk order at the local branch of Tesco for when I come home. Hot Cross Buns it seems, are not just meant for Easter.

All of this general amusement reminded me in a rather untidy segway that I'd recently edited the folder I'd collected from the dreamy Playa de Famara on the northwest corner of Lanzarote back in November. It was a beach that I'd visited twenty years earlier with my then cutting edge Canon film camera, paid for with a surprise bonus at work the previous summer. Back then I had little idea about apertures, or which film to use, and I owned but hadn't taken with me what I can now only refer to as a tripod shaped object. But I do clearly remember standing somewhere around this point and taking a picture of the distant volcanoes in the setting sun. I'm not certain where that twenty year old image ended up, but for years I had it on the bedroom wall, reminding me of those islands of endless springtime where it never gets cold.

What I hadn't done in 2002, was taken my swimming gear. The resort pool was freezing and the sea was even colder at the time, and although both of my then young children had braved the waters, I'd decided to enjoy the sunshine. But now here I was, all of these years later, armed with a pair of swimming shorts. Being notoriously hard of spending, I hadn't paid the extra baggage fees and brought my board with me, but I'm not averse to pretending I'm an ironing board and using my body as the vehicle by which I surf. Ever tried it? It's a rather liberating experience. In fact I have a friend who has never owned a board to my knowledge, but body surfs at Porthtowan well into the autumn each year. And now here I was, on a distant beach in a surprisingly warm sea, body surfing in the shallows and taking the utmost care not to get dragged offshore by a furious rip that dragged everyone in the water from west to east at regular intervals. Ali refused to go in, and went to sleep in one of those delightful stone circles that hold in the heat on the beaches of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.

Later, having survived all attempts by the Atlantic to carry me off in the direction of Madeira, I strolled down the beach to where there were far fewer people and set up a tripod that does pass muster as a tripod. And as you can see, I had a rather enjoyable time, experimenting with shutter speeds and figures walking along the beach as if they'd emerged from a Vettriano painting. Well a Vettriano in swimwear anyway. This pair caught my eye as I ploughed through the images that I took over the course of an hour or more. The chap with the board on top of his head sold the shot to me, as the two beach lifers ambled contentedly along the shoreline in the direction of the setting sun and those glorious volcanoes.

And now I'm pretty much packed for a trip to the neighbouring island. Interestingly (maybe) there's an extra gizmo in the camera bag in the form of an underwater camera - the one my colleagues presented to me as a retirement present eighteen months ago. Whether I get a picture worth sharing from the protracted sub-aqua escapades is something I'm really not sure about, but it's going to be fun trying. And above all - I think we're done with winter now aren't we? About time things warmed up a bit.

Yesterday my son asked him whether I was going to bring my baby grandson a present back from our travels? "What are you thinking of?" I asked. "They do some nice beer out there," came the response. Frankly, I think I smell a rat..........

Ist unser aller Leben !!!!

There’s something very homely about arriving in Vík. Especially if you’ve come from the south eastern region, just as we had done now. All of those miles of bleakly beautiful scenery, driving over wide black lava fields swathed in green moss, crossing furious meltwater rivers on single lane bridges, the mountains on your right hand side and the endless line of electricity pylons to the left, with the sea somewhere beyond. It’s a journey never forgotten once taken, and although you might have briefly stopped at Kirkjubæjarklaustur to fill up on hot dogs and coffee, you will have noticed the absence of anything that looks remotely like a town. I can only imagine what it must be like to travel across that huge expanse of wilderness in the middle of winter. One day I might just find out, although I’m not sure whether I want to be the person behind the wheel when I do.

You know you’re getting close when you finally see the low flat, almost rectangular form of Hjörleifshöfði rising from the black sand on the left hand side of the road, a lone sentinel that guards the town on its eastern flank. When you pass that unmissable landmark you’re just a few miles away from Vík and its attendant delights, and when you’re hungry you know the Ice Cave Bistro is going to be on the agenda before bedtime. There’s no denying that the smell of rampant tourism pervades the air here, with horse riding on the beach, the huge Icewear duty free store and hotels and guesthouses everywhere, yet it still feels like a place in which to relax and enjoy the quiet streets. And Vík is barely more than a village really, a permanent population of three hundred people almost permanently multiplied several times over by us visitors. And with four nights ahead of us here, we were going to enjoy a bit of that tourism too. We might even blow the budget by walking down the street to the Smiðjan Brugghús and doing the unthinkable - ordering a pint of beer in Iceland and trying not to flinch when the bill arrived. Ahead of us lay four buffet breakfasts in what passes for a budget hotel around these parts. Little did I know how much pleasure I was going to have with that waffle maker each morning. Start your day with two of those coated in large dollops of skyr and honey, and your only regret is going to be that you haven’t left any space for the rest of the goodies on offer. Everyone needs a waffle iron in their life.

I felt it the last time we passed this way too. The pull of Vík’s welcoming streets made me feel as if I was somewhere I belonged. Despite having loved every moment of our four nights adventuring around Eystrahorn and Vestrahorn, it was good to be here again, walking towards the beach. In a sense, it did feel as if we’d come home again. And on this first evening there was a glow in the sky that was going to add to the mood. It’s quite a contrast from the rather more famous beach on the other side of that forbidding headland, where coach loads of tourists on day trips from Reykjavík spill across the black sands and dice with death among mischievous sucker waves. While those unseen masses throng Reynisfjara, here on the town’s beach it’s rather more sedate. There were just a couple of togs at the edge of the beach when Lee and I strolled across the dunes and set up our tripods in the inevitable direction of those unmistakable sea stacks, and a few people strolling from one side to the other, but apart from that we had the place entirely to ourselves. No doubt everyone else was in the Ice Cave, filling up on food and buying itchy knitwear for Great Auntie Nellie back home. I love almost everything about this country, but they can keep the sheep’s wool thank you.

It turned out to be the last time we’d catch a sunset on this, our second adventure in Iceland, and the remaining four days involved working in rather more challenging conditions. No more western glows to grin at contentedly in the evenings. But then again, there’s no such thing as the wrong conditions is there? And the more engrossed we became in those final days, the happier the results seemed to be.

Es war sehr kalt, aber der Abend war sehr schön und ruhig am Kochelsee. Ich habe versucht die einsetzenden Abenddämmerung einzufangen. Der Himmel glüht in einem warmen Farbverlauf von tiefem Orange bis hin zu einem samtigen Dunkelblau, während die letzten Sonnenstrahlen die Silhouetten der umliegenden Berge sanft konturieren.

Die glatte Wasseroberfläche des Sees reflektiert die Szenerie mit bemerkenswerter Klarheit, wodurch die Landschaft scheinbar doppelt erscheint – als ob Himmel und Erde sich in perfekter Symmetrie begegnen. Die kahlen Bäume am Ufer fügen eine ruhige Eleganz hinzu, ihre Äste zeichnen feine Linien in den dunkler werdenden Himmel und verdoppeln sich in den Reflexionen des Wassers.

Eine leichte Dunstschicht schwebt über der Wasserfläche, fängt das schwindende Licht ein und verstärkt die geheimnisvolle Atmosphäre. Die Stille des Moments wird greifbar, fast als hielte die Welt den Atem an, um diesen Übergang zwischen Tag und Nacht zu würdigen.

„Lichtspiele der Dämmerung“ zeigt den Kochelsee in einem Moment zeitloser Schönheit – eine Hommage an die vergängliche, aber kraftvolle Ästhetik der Natur.

* * *

It was very cold, but the evening was very beautiful and quiet at Kochelsee. I tried to capture the onset of dusk. The sky glows with a warm color gradient from deep orange to a velvety dark blue, while the last rays of sunlight gently outline the silhouettes of the surrounding mountains.

The smooth surface of the lake reflects the scenery with remarkable clarity, making the landscape appear doubled - as if heaven and earth meet in perfect symmetry. The bare trees on the shore add a quiet elegance, their branches drawing fine lines in the darkening sky and doubling in the reflections of the water.

A light layer of haze hovers over the surface of the water, capturing the fading light and enhancing the mysterious atmosphere. The stillness of the moment becomes tangible, almost as if the world is holding its breath to appreciate this transition between day and night.

“Lichtspiele der Dämmerung” shows the Kochelsee in a moment of timeless beauty - a tribute to the transient but powerful aesthetics of nature.

Well now I’ve started on a short hike through the archives and turned left at the Iceland folders, I’m going to keep on going a little bit further. Next stop Haifoss and a slightly longer hike to the bottom of the canyon. Until a couple of weeks before Lee and I returned to Iceland we didn’t know it was possible to get down here without a set of climbing ropes, crampons and hard hats. Hadn’t even considered the possibility of it in fact. We weren't even trying to find out whether we could - we were quite content at the prospect of taking photos from the top of the ridge on the opposite side of this huge waterfall. But then, and with remarkably fortuitous timing, one of our YouTube regulars took a workshop group down to the base and photographed it from the river. Suddenly an hour or two at most morphed into a half day or more of potential, and any last thoughts of trying to shoehorn a diversion to Gulfoss into the itinerary were abandoned. Gulfoss would be inundated with visitors anyway, and we’d rather avoid the Selfiegrammers. Haifoss was for the hardcore only, with the road marked as off limits to anything other than four wheel drive vehicles - not that this stopped a few intrepid souls from bouncing and bumping along the last section of rutted road in their Fiat Pandas. Good luck with the insurance excess Girls and Boys!

The hike itself wasn’t too difficult at all - at least the downhill half of it wasn’t. Easy to follow, yet most of the small number of people who’d come this far stayed at the top and peered down into the abyss while we trooped virtuously into the bowels of the landscape. And fortune favours the self righteous when it brings you to a view like this. Ok, there may be one or two rocks in the river that we would happily see being removed, but nobody from the Icelandic Landscape Photographers’ Guild has seen fit to try and drive a JCB down here just yet, so we’ll just have to live with them I suppose. Mother Nature is usually pretty consistent, but I don’t suppose she can be perfect all the time. Maybe I should have worked on the other shot from down here that never saw the light of day instead. Yes, I might have to put some words together for that one too. In fact I’ve just reworked both of them so it’s bound to happen eventually.

This picture of Haifoss isn’t one of the more than twenty pre-prepared and as yet unposted stories from our Iceland adventures, all of which were written and ready more than two years ago. I was mired down in a book project in the hopes that my children might find it gathering dust on a shelf one day in the future after I’m gone. Nobody else is ever going to look at them very much, and they certainly don’t show the slightest interest at present. They keep on complaining about the joys and woes of bringing up a child as if I’ve somehow forgotten what it was like. I mean they only have one benign little toddler each, and I’ve reminded them enough times before that when they were the ages that little Sennen and Alfie are now, I was dealing with both of them, separated by two and a half years and more often than not one of us parents pleading for a ceasefire. And anyone who’s had more than one child knows that when the second baby comes along it’s more like nine more of them just got added to the family rather than one. Boom! There goes the silence…..

Apologies - I’ve digressed, and you can probably already tell that this particular yarn failed to make the coffee table volume which resides beside me on the office desk where nobody else ever sits. Lee bought a copy - I suspect he’s the only other person who’s ever looked at it. He’d see this image in the introductory page alongside a passage of blurb that explains why I like Iceland so much, but no story. And I think it deserves a story. That’s why we’re here now, at the bottom of the one hundred and twenty-eight metre single drop monster, covered in spray and gazing at rainbows. It always impresses me that these huge waterfalls can produce their own microclimates, complete with fairytale rainbows hanging across the scene. A dramatic world in miniature that few will ever find because of the effort required to get here at all. Playing with a curious mixture of focus stacking and time blending because I wanted that rush of texture in the foreground flow, but I’m greedy and I was also after the hanging sheets in the waterfall set against the stubborn brown walls of the canyon.

And yes, I did hike down here in my wellies. All the better to get into the water with, unless I wanted to attempt to cryogenically preserve my feet for the next twenty-thousand years. It seems I’m content to do that with quite a lot of these pictures, so why not add feet to the archive? Perhaps not. And do you know what? I just had a look at the folders where I keep the raw files, and thirty-five groups of images haven’t even been touched at all. Thirty-five! Even I’m shocked by that. Ok, some of them are probably never going to make it into the editing suite, but that’s a lot of images from the biggest landscape photography trip we’ve ever made, just lying around completely ignored for more than three years. I’d forgotten many of them. About time I started re-acquainting myself I think.

I’ve no idea whether Tolkien ever visited the middle of Iceland on his travels, but it really did feel as if we were leaving The Shire that morning as we drove away from the quiet green pastures of Fludir for our one full day of photography at the edge of the Golden Circle. Within a mile or two of arriving at the entrance to Road 32, the smattering of evidence of humanity in the broad valley rapidly dwindled away to almost nothing. Just the odd farmstead or camping ground, lines of fenceposts, and of course those ever present electricity pylons that seem to lead to everywhere and nowhere in this empty raw landscape. To our right lay the Þjórsá River, ever changing in width, studded with low marshy islands, while further to the east the snow capped summit of Hekla occupied the horizon, hiding behind it a mysterious hinterland that remains for now a place of dreaming imagination.

The plan for the day was to spend three or four hours at the majestic Haifoss, from where I’ve already shared three stories – and fear not, because there are still a couple more of those to come from a location that delivered some very pleasing and unexpected results. Following this, I’d also discovered another subject that could be achieved by following a circular route along Road 26 in the form of Þjófafoss, a lesser known waterfall that stood before a mountain called Búrfell at a spot where the rest of the human race might never have existed for all the evidence that an image of the scene I’d found showed. Þjófafoss, or Thjofafoss if that’s at all helpful – although however I say it I suspect it sounds like I’m trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles – would mean a slightly longer route back to our base at Fludir, but then again if we’d gone to Gulfoss or Geysir, we’d have been arm wrestling a troop of tourists from everywhere just to get a view, never mind compose a passable image.

Road 26 was a bit of a ride. Having now driven the entire length of Road 32, we took a sharp turn to the right at the point that the notorious F road into the highlands began, and headed south again towards our target. And for the next ten miles or more, we might as well have been sitting on top of an elderly washing machine operating at full spin cycle speed, bumping and juddering along a road that didn’t carry a mountain classification, yet made us feel as if we were heading for the bowels of Mordor and straight into Mr Tolkien’s mind space. For a seemingly endless time the road seemed to shake both us and our four wheel drive car to the edges of our wits, but eventually we arrived upon smooth tarmac and celebrated by way of a modest increase of pressure to my foot upon the right hand pedal.

After a few more miles we spotted the small bumpy track on the right hand side of the road that took us that final mile or so to a rough and completely empty car parking area in front of the river once more – the same river we’d seen earlier in the day at a place where it splits into two and encircles Búrfell and what passes in these parts for the forest that bears its name and covers the lower slopes. It wasn’t going to be a long visit in truth. “Well, I’m glad I’ve seen it, but I don’t think I’m going to bother taking a photo of it,” decided Lee as we stared at the mud streaked water passing by at the rate of several thousand gallons of water per second. He did in fact take five shots of the scene – I know this because I still have all his RAW files safely stored on my external hard drive, the one device we took with us for extra backup – but I could understand the lack of enthusiasm. It wasn’t the prettiest of locations for the late afternoon hours of what had been a long day on the road, with more than an hour of driving still to come.

But I decided I was going to give it a go. The natural colours in the scene were dark, brown and brooding and I saw the possibility for a black and white panorama, using five merged landscape images to capture the mood of this remote and foreboding location at the outmost edge of civilisation. With low cloud covering the summit of the big lump of ground on the opposite side of the Þjórsá River, the crudely elemental landscape seemed as if it were warning us away from this place where nobody else had bothered to come to. Behind us day Hekla and the deadly interior, while in front of us lay the view you’re looking at in the picture. Sobering.

We resumed our route on Road 26, not seeing a single car go by in either direction for more than twenty miles, despite now being on a smooth, straight tarmac road. I’ve never been anywhere where I’ve experienced that before. I wish all roads could be like this – don’t you? We passed an occasional guest house, and a farm here and there as gradually we returned from Tolkien’s edge of the map towards The Shire and humanity once more. It had been an experience in the world of places with unpronounceable names.

(I'm just back from Fuerteventura with more stories to share - and I'm way behind on your tales. I'll start catching up now!)

Old Moor RSPB

Peniche Harbour: Where Salt, Soul, and Sunlight Converge:-)

(An Artistic Look at the Marina's Embrace)

Peniche Harbour wears many faces. Venture beyond the robust energy of the fishing fleet, and you'll find another rhythm, a different kind of beauty nestled within its protective arms: the marina. It’s here, amidst the gentle sway of pleasure craft, that the harbour reveals a more serene, yet equally captivating, soul.

Let's view this space through that imagined artistic lens.

Each mast waits, a silent promise of wind-filled sails and journeys yet to come.

The water itself, often calmer in the marina's embrace, becomes a near-perfect mirror. It reflects the elegant curves of hulls – whites, deep blues, perhaps a jaunty red – doubling the scene, blurring the line between reality and its liquid echo.

Even the sounds offer a different melody. The dominant note isn't the roar of engines, but a subtler symphony: the gentle lap-lap of water against hulls, the occasional clink of halyards tapping against aluminium masts, the soft sigh of the breeze weaving through the rigging. It's a soundtrack of quiet anticipation, of leisure earned and adventures waiting.

The Peniche marina isn't separate from the harbour's soul; it's a distinct expression of it. It speaks of a different relationship with the sea – one of exploration, sport, and tranquil escape. Yet, the salt tang still hangs heavy in the air, the cries of gulls still echo, and the vast Atlantic horizon still calls.

Looking through that artistic frame, the marina becomes more than just a parking lot for boats. It's a composition of line, light, and reflection. It’s a place of waiting potential, of quiet elegance juxtaposed against the raw energy nearby. It's another facet of Peniche's enduring connection to the water, captured not in dramatic struggle, but in graceful repose.

Bideford registered , in Harbour at Ilfracombe . Sun 's reflections of the water captured on a nice but quite cold day in April ..

Rowing boat Capstone ,heads out for a training session ..

Dave had a very clear plan. He’d looked closely at the map, done a bit of research on some stock images, and picked his spot before we’d set off. On arrival he planted his tripod at the cliff edge, halfway along the beach far below and stayed there until after sunset. Later he told us he’d only taken one shot that was worth the effort of putting through the editing suite. The others were all very slightly blurred. While Lee and I are both now disciples of the rather wonderful magnetic Kase filters, Dave continues to use big square pieces of glass. Similarly effective of course, albeit with the exception that they do tend to act like sails if there’s anything more than the merest of zephyrs beating across the air. Not that it mattered though. Dave’s inimitable editing style delivered a very satisfactory entry into the Explore page the day afterwards. I say inimitable because I’ve tried without success to replicate it more than once, before remembering that it would be better to continue to work on my own process and forget about his degree in Fine Art. Imitation is the sincerest form of irritation after all.

I also had a very clear plan. Ever since the steps were closed off to the general public, my philosophy on the place we should henceforth really just refer to as “Bedruthan” has remained consistent. For a start, only shoot here on a high tide when there’s water around the base of the stacks and all of the rocky debris distractions on the beach are concealed. Once that initial qualification has been fulfilled I either perch on a clifftop at the south end of the beach, or I hover over the edge of the one on the northern side. The latter offers what I think is usually a more pleasing view, the big stacks lining up like three enormous anvils, with the smaller rocks that I’ve come to think of as “the witch’s hat” and “the shoemaker’s last” in the foreground. On a windy midwinter afternoon on a high tide with the low sun just about dropping into the frame, it’s quite a magnificent scene to behold, as long as you’re very careful around the crumbling clifftops that led to those steps being closed three years ago. In the middle of summer the sun sets far enough across the beach to feature in shots taken from the southern side, once famously throwing a vivid pink sky at us seemingly out of nowhere. I hadn’t yet imposed the high tide rule upon myself at that stage. In that shot the sky was one of the best under which I’ve taken pictures. It’s just a shame that the beach was a shambles.

So while Dave decisively planted his tripod at position A, and Lee waited for the arguing couple to finish their takeaway pizza and depart position B so that he could concentrate on the view that had grabbed his attention, I hurried over the coastal path to position C in the north, before scratching my head and moving on to position D, even further north, where almost immediately I engaged full on headless chicken mode. Position E in the south was a total non-starter, and while position F to the faintly south east had the best of the light behind it, the rhomboid of a stack that featured there wasn’t really riveting enough to warrant much effort. As I trotted back along the path and looked again at Dave’s viewpoint I declared I didn’t like the shape of the stack from this angle. By now, Pizza Couple had decided to continue their dispute in position Z at the newly appeared campsite behind us, so I joined Lee at position B for all of 15 seconds before moving yet again. Back at position C I tinkered about and decided that I still didn’t like the light from here. In fact I’d just missed the sun briefly appearing and throwing a bit of tasty side light onto the anvils. I didn’t even bother with position D again.

So finally, here I was, with most of my daily step count requirement having been registered in the last hour or so, back at position A, facing west and out to sea, where Lee had now joined Dave, his tripod frighteningly close to a cliff edge that makes a lump of Wensleydale Cheese look stable. I stared doubtfully at the view from here again, thinking how strange it was that the angle one views a big chunk of rock from alters its appearance so dramatically. A hundred yards along the path I’d noticed for the first time ever that the anvil has a hole in its middle. From here it looked like a wandering giant had lost his boot on the beach. Look, you can even see the toes being tickled by the tide. By now the sun had disappeared, a patch of soft peachy glow just about painting the horizon. At least the light was now in the frame, and a gang of gulls littered the base of the boot, settling down for the night. A series of exposures of varying lengths followed, the calm summer ocean offering a flat glassy surface at thirty seconds of shutter time. Finally the high cloud delivered an element of texture to the sky and the deal with position A was secured. Dave had been right all along. Flipping fine art graduates.

And there lies the rub with Bedruthan. The two opposite ends of the beach can bring rewarding results behind the camera, but with the best of the light far out to sea in the middle of August, shooting straight across the beach from north to south or vice versa becomes a challenge. At least here was a subject that offered a minimalist view, with the light we so often look for on show. The stack, with its new appearance from the unfamiliar angle had gradually grown on me, offering an alternative composition above the beach that may forever be out of bounds. An alternative composition for now at least; who knows how long for when each winter’s sequence of storms and gales brings cliffsides crashing down onto beaches around here. Good job one of us had done his homework in any case.

How the Spoonbill feeds. He rocks his bill from side to side to stir up the water. Captured at Ft. DeSoto in St. Petersburg, FL.

I think that each of us makes our own line in the sand. There are those for whom anything goes, while others are content to bend things very slightly. While many want their image to tell the world what they saw, others want to share how they felt. "Photograph what you feel, not what you see," I read somewhere recently. Of course there are also people who refuse to use the editing suite, or filters. Personally I'm in favour of whatever it is that makes you happy. We each get to decide where our boundaries are. I was reminded just yesterday that Mads Peter Iversen, a landscape photographer I much admire and respect isn't averse to adding a completely alien sky to an image - he has an aurora that he quite happily adds over whatever sub-arctic landscape he's set his viewfinder on. His prerogative of course, and in his honesty he makes no apology on the subject and knows it will divide opinions; it's not something I've ever been tempted to do. Perhaps you have - nobody's judging who's right and who's wrong. It's all about choice after all.

I think I probably fall into the category of wanting to share how a view I took a picture of (or some pictures of) made me feel. So while for me personally, a sky that wasn't there is going to remain in the "Add Unicorns Menu," I'm no stranger to the practice of combining a few images taken within a short space of time to pull together the elements I wanted. Living in an area where the sea is the obvious and ever changing subject, I'm quite relaxed about taking the greatest hits from a series of incoming waves and blending them into a single frame. Ironically Mads taught me this through his Photoshop editing course, the first few chapters of which very quickly reminded me how little I knew, having always resorted to its easier to use cousin in Lightroom. I still do, but Photoshop grabs a lot more of the action than in the days when I knew what the spot removal tool was for, but the rest of the screen was just a magical hinterland of unexplained buttons. In fact most of the rest of the screen remains a strange and mysterious place to me, but gradually I'm making use of the bits I've begun to make sense of.

In this example, I'd recently happened across a sea stack at Gwithian I'd never noticed before, largely because I'm usually somewhere on that headland across the water waiting for the sky to change. But on this occasion I'd decided I needed brighter light to catch the flight of the gulls without resorting to an ISO setting of about two hundred gazillion, even though the courses they plotted were slowed by a strong cold northerly that was making the day a challenge for us all. I was glad I had a warm van with a gas stove, a kettle and a diesel heater waiting for me just a couple of hundred yards away. Two days earlier I'd stood here on the dunes above a receding tide and taken another composite, before deciding that what I really wanted was an incoming surge wrapped around the base of the stack. A tempestuous sky would have been more to my taste, so I'll probably end up going again when the conditions combine in my favour - preferably with a bit of side light to illuminate the gulls against a big black cloud. I'd better have my waterproofs handy that day.

What I'd also decided I needed was the sea to be moving at the right speed, and in my world there are only three of them; "forever," "just enough to blur the motion" and "really very fast." "Forever," is my go to setting when the sea can't be bothered to do very much, while "really very fast" only comes into play when it's ferocious - something I never seem to get quite right - I usually just come home with six hundred nondescript grainy white splodges on the memory card and end up deleting the lot. "Just enough to blur" entails the happy deployment of the six stop and a shutter speed usually somewhere between half a second and two seconds, and that's where I wanted to be for the sea itself. The gulls arrived within quick succession of one another - very good of them to be so obliging as that cloud was shifting towards us all at quite a pace and the blend might otherwise have been a lot more tricky to deliver. Have you spotted the fourth gull yet? Neat eh? I had to wait for it to be in that exact spot for it to have any chance of joining the party. The overall result isn't the sharpest picture I've ever delivered - I'm going to blame the wind and the fact that my tripod needs to acquire some spikes. Bad workman, tools, you know the rest of the proverb. Still, the picture does carry me back to that windy afternoon on the clifftop in the dunes, watching the gulls forever flying eastward - exactly what it's supposed to do.

So there's my confession, although you'd have worked it out for yourself anyway. I do composites from time to time, but only when I haven't travelled too far from reality. After all, those gulls had probably arranged themselves in far more interesting attitudes together across this scene at different times throughout the day. Obviously they'd have got a lot further in 1.3 seconds than the lie I've tried to sell here suggests, even against that last icy blast of winter, but the textures in the water wouldn't have been quite so much fun. And that line in the sand I drew for myself - it's hidden there somewhere under all that water, probably moving all the time.

And whether you're a purist or a fantasist, or somewhere in between like most of us, I hope you've got a plentiful supply of chocolate to get you through the weekend. Have a good one.

On the cliff of the American Falls is one of three waterfalls that together are known as Niagara Falls on the Niagara River along the Canada-U.S. border. Unlike the much larger Horseshoe Falls, of which two-thirds of the falls is located in Ontario, Canada and one-third in New York State, United States, the American Falls is completely within the U.S. state of New York.