Gower Photography

I realised the other day that I hadn’t taken any pictures for myself for almost a month. The withdrawal symptoms were kicking in! What with finishing work for other clients, getting ill and losing my voice for about 8 days and getting ready for Christmas; time flew by at an alarming rate. Typically after last years wonderful snow, we were back to normal this year with a dark, grey and wet Christmas. Ideal weather to play with my toys from Santa, but not the best weather for feeling inspired to make some photographs.

Finally on Wednesday the weather looked more promising, so I decided to try and get out and about. The tide times looked good for Mewslade so off I wondered for the morning.

I was surprised that the beach wasn’t busier. You would think in these troubled economic times that using the free (okay, there is the car parking fee) resources around us would be popular and going to the beach doesn’t cost much. A few left over Turkey sandwiches for a picnic, plus cake and mince pies taste so much better when outdoors! When I arrived there was a covering of spume foam over the path to the beach. Being about knee deep probably put most off, but later on it had cleared with the wind taking the foam away. The sea had taken quite a bit of sand off the beach and more of the rocks were exposed than normal. Great for photographs.

Anyway, I got so carried away I stayed on the beach the whole day until a cloud-spoiled sunset at the end finally encouraged me to leave. Unusually for me, I even skipped lunch, so I was slightly cold and hungry when I left, but I was pleased with the images, as I felt I had managed to get a good variety in the changing light.

I was hoping to get some audio recordings as well, but the wind was proving too strong to get any of any value. I think the image below will become the cover artwork for a planned, but yet unrecorded ambient CD of the sounds of Mewslade bay. With the current list of ideas that I have, expect this to be released around 2050AD!

Just a quick post to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and hope that Santa brings you lots of surprises. Thank you to all my clients and course participants for joining me in my world of photography. Peace. Best wishes, Nick.

(PS. no snow this year , so had to use some images from last year. What a contrast with the weather outside at the moment – rain)

Having seen the BBC local news on Friday, I was pleased to see that a large gathering of Starlings had decided to make WWT National Wetlands Centre Wales their home for the winter. Previously I have had to travel further afield to see such a large spectacle. I noticed last year when on north Gower and on Cefn Bryn that starlings were heading over to the Llanelli area to roost at night, but never knew where they gathered. An appeal via Twitter to the local birders didn’t produce anything concrete either. Having them settle where access is easy is a bonus as well.

There was a good gathering of other photographers, birdwatchers and nature lovers at the centre this evening. They all had one thing in common; the look of delight on their faces as the birds gathered, flew over our heads and finally roosted for the night. You can never beat nature and the natural world!

Before the Starlings arrived at dusk I had a few hours to walk around the centre. I decided before I set out not to bring along the long telephoto lens, partly because I wanted to carry some audio equipment to try and record the starlings, but also to force myself to come up with something different for a change apart from just bird photographs. My attempts to record some audio didn’t work out, but I will have another go at a later point.

As has been well noted by other wildlife watchers, nature is a bit confused with the current weather conditions. There are signs of both autumn, winter and spring at the moment, with the centre showing signs of all of them.

Sunday was one of those days when you head out with a few picture ideas in mind, only to find that the weather has changed and what you thought of isn’t possible. The weather was bright and sunny when I planned another trip to Whiteford.  On setting off the bright sunshine started to get weakened by a bit of haze in the sky, only to find the sky fully clouded over with only a few breaks in it on my arrival at Whiteford.

It reminded me of a tuition day I did last week when we had great ideas planned, but torrential rain ruined it. You have to be able to adapt to the conditions you are given. The light had died completely and had gone quite flat at Whiteford, with all the colours getting quite dull as well. The flat lighting had reduced all texture and any landscape relief, so colour images are out if I wanted to do a wider landscape view. Time for some black and white. As black and white is a distortion from reality, it allows you to adjust more in the digital/conventional dark room, without it looking false.

I watched a presentation by Matthew Jordan Smith on the Creative Live website over the weekend. Even though it was based on fashion and beauty photography (which I used to do in the old days in my previous life in London), I find that I can always learn something from other photographers. He taught really well and made the studio a less intimidating place for the beginners watching. What did I learn? An example is shown above. It is in the selection and placing of images side by side when used in magazines and display to get the best impact. It revolves around the use of opposites and making sure that the two side by side images do not look identical in scale, colour, layout etc. The images can be similar, but not the same. There must be a difference. Once he mentioned it, it seems so obvious, but already it has help with a project I am working on at the moment.

On leaving Whiteford, the crows put on a great show, flocking together and producing great shapes. It had got really dark by then, so my shutter speed was very slow. The crows were brought into the air by four Buzzards flying over on the thermals, but my attempts at trying an image with all of them together were fruitless. I tried to get some audio instead, but the wind was too high and I got a lot of wind noise on the mics instead of the crows.

What looked initially as a bit of a waste of time, ended up as a quite productive afternoon in the end. So what ever the weather get out and make some images, but tailor them to the conditions and try not to get focused on one idea only.

Once again the weather was kind to us at Worm’s Head, with an okay sunset at the end of the day. It looked promising for up to about 30 minutes before sunset, when a bank of cloud appeared on the horizon. Earlier in the day we had blue skies with some clouds to break up the sky a bit, but it was a more ‘postcard weather’, with the images looking okay, but a bit bland. At least it wasn’t raining like last weekend at Mewslade!

I would like to thanl Phil, Malcolm, Jeff and Martin for putting up with me for a day and hope that you are pleased with your pictures. From what I saw on the back of the camera, there are a few ideas I will be nicking and use myself!

With the clocks going back an hour and having been busy with the workshop yesterday, I decided to have a lazy Sunday today. The F1 Indian Grand Prix was on at a reasonable time and the papers arrived in time for me to read them over breakfast for a change. Everything was going to plan; an interesting if not exciting race, an article on Foley sound recording for movies in the Sunday magazine, until I noticed that the berries on the pyracantha bush in the back garden were proving very popular with all types of birds. Dilemma. To continue watching the Grand Prix or to take the opportunity to get a few images of the birds if possible. The light was quite good, but I was concerned what the white window frames of my neighbours house would look like in the images.

Luckily for me the best photographic vantage point for the birds was by opening the sliding patio doors next to the TV. Brilliant! Now I could watch the F1 race and photograph the birds at the same time. Who said men can’t multi-task! By taking a low view point, the white frames of my neighbours house were mostly removed from the background and their brick work produced a great out of focus background as well. I noticed that the yellow berries were more popular than the red berries on the neighbouring bush. This meant that I could predict where the birds were most likely to be, which allowed my to alter my position again to get a better background as well as a view of the TV. If only all nature photography could be this simple!