2022 Gallery

Contents of this page:-

• Welcome to 2022!

• Egret or Eejit? (Devon, January 2022)

• Another Saturday Night, Another Stagnant Pond (Devon, April 2022)

• The Shape of Spring to Come (Devon, April 2022)

• One Lens, Twin Chapels (Devon, April 2022)

• Keep Culm and Carry On (Devon, April 2022)

• A Hard Day's Knightshayes (Devon, May 2022)

• The East Lothian Question (Scotland, May 2022)

  • Introduction - Exorcising The Ghost of 2016

  • Snap Happy - The Canon Collection

  • Night-Time Lunacy - The One That Got Away

  • Countryside Capers - The Lake, The Rake and The Rain on Traprain

  • Seacliff Sunrise - From The Cradle to The Cave

• Canine Chaos (Devon, June 2022)

• "Alas, Poor Yarak!" (Devon, July 2022)

• Love is Contagious (Devon, July 2022)

• Busy Bees and Psychedelic Sunflowers (Devon, August 2022)

• Jersey Tiger Moth (Devon, August 2022)

• Devon Dawn - The Three Apostles (Christ Cross, August 2022)

• Darkest Devon - Astro Apostles (Christ Cross, August 2022)

• Panoramic Arran (A Scottish Homecoming, September 2022)

  • Introduction - Shooting the Canon

  • The Beautiful South - Bennan Head and Black Cave

  • Fool's Golden Hour - Missing the Point at Kingscross Point

  • Meet Dino - From the Town of Bedrock

  • Kildonan Shoreline - Flora and Fauna

  • Rosa and Sannox - Two Glens, Four Corbetts

  • Spooky Mansion - Things That Go 'Bump' in the Night

  • Monoliths in Monochrome - Ghosts of Machrie Moor

• Autumn Almanac - Colours of Killerton (Devon, October 2022)

• The Shores of St. Mawes (Cornwall, November 2022)

  • Introduction - The Name of The Roseland

  • Photographic Philosophies - Corny Sandscapes or Cornish Landscapes?

  • Chapel of Rest - The Sunday House

  • A Tale of Two Saints - Mawes and 'Justin Roseland'

  • Twilight Challenge, Part 1 - Fraggle Rock Lighthouse

  • Twilight Challenge, Part 2 - St. Mawes Castle

• Foreground Attraction - Riverside Reconnaissance and Review (Devon, December 2022)

• Addendum - The Hobbit Tree in ‘23 (Devon, January 2023)

Welcome to my 2022 Gallery, which - to don my Captain Obvious hat - is continuing the tradition established by my respective 2020 Gallery and 2021 Gallery pages!

As usual, the winter season is a fairly quiet time for me in terms of photographic output. As well as being hampered by shortened daylight hours and a reduction in travel, I tend to use this time for blogging or other spring-cleaning (winter-cleaning?) website activities. But the scarcity of new pictures from the early part of 2022 is hopefully offset by the arrival of my illustrated short-story blog, Shadow in the Tin, which both celebrates Britain’s most dramatic mountain range and seeks to acknowledge the challenges of lockdown. Please do peruse the story to find out more! :-)

For my first offering of 2022… a rare spell of late January sunshine brought our friendly neighbourhood egret out to play. I’d been intending to photograph this beautiful yet skittish creature for a number of years, but had never quite found the opportunity. In the end I needed venture no further than my Devon back garden, for the elusive wader magically appeared up our nearby tree one sunny Saturday morning.

I hadn’t used my Fuji X-T3 camera gear for a couple of months, so was surprised that I managed to fit my 1.4x teleconverter and 400mm telephoto lens before the critter once more took flight. It was a case of capture the egret or feel like an eejit! :-)

After shifting focus from the archive imagery and story-telling of Shadow in the Tin (my latest blog), my first planned photoshoot of 2022 involved a short local trip to the River Culm.

I use the word planned advisedly, for this was really just a tentative Saturday evening jaunt, taking advantage of lingering light over the burgeoning spring countryside. In the event, my explorations alongside (and occasionally into) the river failed to yield the shots of buzzing insects or gently flowing water that I’d hoped for. It was instead a stagnant roadside pond - an unlikely subject, you might think - which ended up holding my attention. The reflections seemed almost abstract in their nature, blurring the distinction between mirrored branches and real tangled trees…

To continue the theme of tree branches, mid-April once again found me scouring the local Devon countryside in search of shape and form. A sunny Easter weekend showed off the developing greenery to fine effect, at a time of year when the leaves have yet to fully obscure the tree’s woody skeleton. In some ways, it is these gnarly twists and turns - and their contorted fractal geometry - which help to make specimens such as this mighty oak so magical.

Easter Monday provided a long-awaited opportunity to try out a tilt-shift lens… in particular, my newly-purchased 24mm Samyang F3.5 with Fuji-X mount.

As the name suggests, this type of lens can be both tilted and shifted - left to right or up and down - in order to vary the plane of focus and perspective. It would connect to the body of my Fuji X-T3 camera mechanically although not electronically, meaning that aperture and focus (in addition to tilting and shifting) would need to be set manually using the lens itself. This could clearly take some getting used to!

By way of preparation, I’d done a little googling on the theory behind tilting and shifting - however, becoming too deeply embroiled in the Scheimpflug principle or the diorama effect only served to confuse matters further! There comes a time when it’s better to simply dive in and see what unfolds…

For this particular composition, I suspect the advantages of tilting the plane of focus, or shifting perspectives, are questionable. But much of the fun of shooting with this type of lens is in the creative expression and quirkiness, whether using trial subjects or not!

So what of practical uses? In the world of commercial photography, the shift capability is often used for maintaining parallel lines when shooting architecture or interiors, or indeed for capturing near-seamless panoramas. Tilting, on the other hand, can be used either for a large depth of field (ensuring front-to-back sharpness without focus-stacking), or conversely for an angled, shallow depth of field (sometimes making life-size subjects appear miniature). I must admit that I had this type of miniature (diorama) effect in mind for my Twin Chapel test shoot, although I would have needed a higher vantage point to really make it work (at least, that’s my excuse!).

I’ll conclude this section by presenting a couple of panorama-shaped crops from my new lens… almost the same composition throughout, but the penultimate shot with a tilted plane of focus and the final example (more conventionally) without. Ironically - for all of my fevered tilting and blurring - I think the conventional one might be my favourite! :-0

This is hopefully just the opening salvo, so please stay tuned for further crazy cases of tiltin’, shiftin’, shake, rattle ‘n’ rollin’! ;-)

Culm Valley - Part 1

As Easter slid into the rear-view mirror, the next April weekend found me resuming my tilt-shift trials through a series of mini-jaunts to the local Devon countryside. (To paraphrase The League of Gentlemen, you might say these were ‘local shots for local people’!)

Initially I envisaged these as test shots, until it struck me that this was doing the Culm Valley an injustice (especially in springtime). Yes, part of my brief was to play with the camera/lens settings; and granted, this is not the most celebrated part of Devon (which is not meant disparagingly; the competition is serenely fierce!). Yet there is clearly great beauty here, with much photographic potential. I don’t pretend to have fully unlocked this potential (of course not!), but hopefully the realisation has spurred me on to seek out captivating new subjects or vistas. In short, to make each trip about looking up to nature - or interesting architecture - rather than down to a technical manual!

The three images below are each from a different excursion (I quite enjoy the challenge of one pic per trip!), and all were taken with my new tilt-shift lens. Only the final image (Killerton Chapel) really utilises the tilting capability, but that’s fine… I don’t want to over-extend the tricks department too early! :-)

Culm Valley - Part 2

Fast forward to the next weekend, and the final day of April… more specifically, a sedate Saturday afternoon exploring Killerton House and Gardens.

The previous week’s visit to Killerton Chapel had prompted me to return and instead focus on the House. I wanted to place this homely manor, with its distinctive splash of colour, in the context of the wider parkland estate… even if this did mean braving the drainage in the lower field! (The drainage is fine, incidentally - I’m just showing my age by referencing Ralph and Ted from The Fast Show…) :-)

Most of my time was spent teeing up the first couple of landscape shots, so the bluebell wood was almost an afterthought (which deserved better!). Nonetheless, I’ve concluded this section with a parting view of the bluebells in front of Killerton’s Bear’s Hut, which I’ve always thought has a slightly dreamy Hansel-and-Gretel type quality.

As with Part 1 of my Culm Valley explorations, all of these images were taken using my Fuji X-T3 fitted with new tilt-shift lens…

As things turned out, I was destined to return: for some shots of Killerton from later in the year, please check out my Autumn Almanac section (below)… :-)

Beware: an unexpected side-effect of adopting a tilt-shift lens is a burgeoning interest in photographing buildings. Even without opening the Pandora’s Box of perspective-altering tricks, the very fact that this lens is so often linked to architecture seems to be enough - for better or worse - to plant the stately seed.

But that’s OK, as help is available (probably). Anyway, buildings are ideal for story-telling, whether that story is real or imagined. And as with other grand photographic subjects - people, animals, trees, mountains - they are frequently imbued with personality. A particularly fine building will exhibit character, habitat and history. Sometimes it will even present an expressive face.

Run-down or ruined structures often tell the most poignant tales, with remote derelicts regarded as ‘hot property’ by landscape photographers and other artists. But since I’m new to all this, I’ve pretty much started with the obvious… the two great National Trust estates which lie a few miles either side of my Devon home.

Killerton House is featured in the section above, its homely feel offset in jaunty orange against a wooded, hilly backdrop. It’s a warm scene, which seems to call for vibrant colour.

• Introduction - Exorcising The Ghost of 2016

• Snap Happy - The Canon Collection

• Night-Time Lunacy - The One That Got Away

• Countryside Capers - The Lake, The Rake and The Rain on Traprain

• Seacliff Sunrise - From The Cradle to The Cave

As mid-May rolled around, Karen and I happily headed north for our first proper holiday of the year. Admittedly we were less happy when we encountered gridlock in the Midlands, prompting us to abandon the motorway and somehow become mired in the vicinity of Villa Park… but all’s well that ends well, so let’s not dwell on the negatives! Even Rocky the dog enjoyed our eventual scenic drive through the Borders, though Moogie probably felt smug at opting to ‘staycation’ in Devon with her Gran and Gramps! ;-)

Our destination was East Lothian in South-East Scotland, its magical mix of rural and coastal scenery - coves and castles, hills and islands - forming the backdrop to many a childhood adventure while visiting my maternal grandparents.

Despite being one of our favourite places, we hadn’t set foot in East Lothian for six years. Our previous visit, back in May 2016, had turned out to be a wonderfully busy week’s holiday. While catching up with family and friends we’d ticked off as many tourist attractions as possible, from boat-trips and beaches to monuments and museums. And, of course, it was all assiduously documented on film (by which I mean digitally; I’m coining a phrase!). I was still shooting on auto in those days, short on photography skills but armed with my Fuji X-S1 bridge camera and plenty of enthusiasm. Afterwards I’d re-lived our escapades during months of Picasa post-processing, generating a raft of intricate collages for an online family photo album. It was a great experience, if a little obsessive… for example, the 2016 collage presented here (featuring the Bass Rock above a theme of 7 days, 7 beaches) suffered the domestic indignity of becoming a cushion cover! :-0

In case I’m starting to sound sanctimonious in declaring victory over some sort of documentary photo addiction, I must confess that I’ve occasionally fallen off the wagon. I’m tempted to blame Karen for allowing me to carry her wee Canon point-and-shoot during our East Lothian day-trips - but in truth, I have to hold my hand up and shoulder some responsibility. So yes, I did take the odd spontaneous holiday snap during our 2022 excursions, and I even found it liberating to simply shoot on auto and make the most of quick, satisfying compositions. A small number are presented below, with a nominal amount of post-processing applied using Picasa (my editing tool of choice from the good old days!)…

Unless otherwise credited, the remaining images from my East Lothian gallery (May 2022) were shot using my Fuji X-T3 with various lenses and filters… and indeed with varying degrees of success!

Early on the second morning of our stay, a special event was due to occur: much of the world would be treated to a total lunar eclipse. In other words, the Earth’s shadow would be cast across the surface of the full Moon, in the process turning it blood-red.

Despite taking place at an unholy pre-dawn hour, this was clearly an opportunity not to be missed. I’d consulted The Photographer’s Ephemeris website before travelling to East Lothian, to check my astronomical angles and alignments. I found that the Moon would actually set in its eclipsed state, enabling it to be shot low on the horizon where it appears large and allows tantalising foreground options. One mouth-watering idea was to shoot the Blood Moon as it silhouetted the Hopetoun Monument on the small but shapely Garleton Hills.

In the event, I didn’t take a single shot. Even the local farmers and fisher-folk seemed to stay in bed that morning! :-(

Faced with such a dismal failure, why am I bothering to report all this? In part, I suppose it’s hard to resist a one-that-got-away story, that elusive prize becoming bigger and shinier with each re-telling. But more than this, I think it teaches us something about landscape photography itself. Many photographers are understandably eager to display classic portfolio pictures, but are less forthcoming about their ill-fated attempts and nearly-shots (which I suspect are actually more common). For me, the true landscape photography bug is not revealed when we unveil dappled light on the mountains or an epic sunset (fine as these things are). It’s revealed when there’s little chance of success but we carry on regardless, just in case something magical happens. And if that magic doesn’t materialise (as it usually won’t), we look forward with ever sweeter anticipation to the next opportunity. In my case, to capturing a Seacliff Sunrise (of which more later!). :-)

Dawn had struggled to break following the obscured lunar eclipse, and indeed the ensuing day would prove to be the worst of the week, weather-wise. Yet I was determined to open my photographic account, and wondered whether the brooding skies might lend themselves to a ‘moody monochrome’ treatment of a rustic old hay rake which I’d discovered on our holiday farm.

I’d initially misidentified this enigmatic piece of farm machinery as a plough, leading me to dream of a night-time astro shot in which it formed a neatly-themed foreground to The Plough constellation. But this would be a moot point: the nights were not clear or moonless enough for astro photography, at least not that I knew of. In the end I just took a single day-time shot using my tilt-shift lens, the tripod as low to the ground as I could get it. The monochrome finish was applied using Lightroom…

That afternoon remained distinctly inclement. We returned to North Berwick on a brief family outing, using the standard seaside ‘wet weather’ formula - soggy walk along the beach, then a warming poke of chips (salt & sauce, of course!) - before settling back in at our cosy rural hideaway, the aptly-named Muckle Snug.

Yet the rainclouds began to disperse during the early evening, leaving wisps of mist draped across the bobbly parts of the landscape. This opened up a tantalising possibility… should I head out again with my camera and see what I could find? It would be my third photoshoot of the day, which did seem a little excessive… though in my defence, the first two shoots had yielded only one image between them! With nothing else happening for an hour or so, approval was soon secured.

Clearing Rain on Traprain

The obvious subject was Traprain Law, an isolated hill near Haddington which dominated the view from The Muckle Snug’s living room window.

Traprain Law is one of those curious volcanic plugs which dot this otherwise gentle landscape, its distinctive whaleback sculpted as a crag-and-tail during the last Ice Age. It shares its geological heritage with similar local landmarks such as North Berwick Law and the Bass Rock, or Arthur’s Seat and Castle Rock in Edinburgh. And although less famous than these craggy cousins, Traprain cradles its own rich history and charms. Its folklore tells of murderous tales from the time of St. Mungo, while archeology - just as incredibly but more tangibly - has revealed a massive hoard of Roman treasure. Traprain also hosts a Neolithic pond, a hill fort, a couple of war-time look-out huts, a huge abandoned quarry, some hidden natural cliffs, and a herd of wild ponies which roam its grassier slopes. Something for everyone, from almost every era!

Despite these riches, Traprain had only really been on the periphery of my ‘go-to’ childhood holiday haunts. I’d explored it maybe two or three times over the years, but hadn’t properly absorbed the magic - after all, it’s tough competing with the East Lothian coast! But while smarting from that morning’s lunar eclipse debacle, I’d driven home through the country lanes and been excited to find a fresh angle on it from the east, viewed across a field of oilseed rape. This was the view to which I now returned, setting up my tripod within the actual field (and hoping that any passing farmers would be sympathetic to my plight!)…

While processing this image later, I must admit that I wasn’t too sure about it. The hill and swirling mist had seemed more dramatic in real life, while the foreground - which I’d envisaged as a sea of yellow - looked decidedly tangled. Still, it was nice to be out there, and if nothing else I’d created a digital memento of this special place!

Picture-wise, I must admit that I didn’t get quite what I wanted from the Traprain photoshoot - possibly because I didn’t quite know what I wanted - but it was amazing being up there, with just the wildlife for company and East Lothian as a canvas.

My first target with the zoom lens was John Muir Country Park, a vast stretch of sand and surf where the River Tyne meets the North Sea. (That’s the Haddington Tyne, not the Newcastle one!) I could just make out the sandy spit, with its distinctive small copse, that Karen and I had explored with our friend Melissa (and Rocky the dog) a couple of days earlier…

Vestiges of morning mist were still visible in the distant Firth of Forth, forming a surreal backdrop to North Berwick Law.

Although an obvious subject, I particularly relished the challenge of picking out a murky Bass Rock, around eight miles away to the north. When the haar allowed, the ruined ramparts of Tantallon even made a fleeting appearance as the land gave way to sea…

Not to be outdone by any rival volcanic plugs, Traprain Law’s wild ponies put in a guest appearance during my descent. (There’s a joke here somewhere along the lines of The Law is an Ass… but I’ll leave that to somebody less worthy!) ;-)

From Rake to Lake (and Lake to Loch?)

By now you’ve seen The Rake and The Rain on Traprain (as well as the Sun), but what of The Lake which I also advertised in this section heading? Well, that was to come on the evening of the following day (we’ve now reached midweek), when I returned to Smeaton Lake at East Linton.

Karen and I had first been introduced to Smeaton - which features an art gallery, garden centre, exotic wood and field of Highland coos, as well as the ornamental lochan - on the opening day of our holiday, when Mel injected some welcome local knowledge. We’d called in at Smeaton’s homely café en route to Tyninghame Beach, and it was nice to discover somewhere new in a region that I thought I’d explored reasonably well.

It’s disconcerting how quickly a week’s holiday can slip by, a swirl of potential one moment and a fading memory the next. I’m tempted to dress this up as a positive… to say that we should see the end of our holiday as a transition from one contented state to another, as though on a continuous ‘happy cycle’ of anticipation, experience and nostalgia. But that’s probably a little glib - the truth is, we now had just one day left in East Lothian, and I wanted to make the most of it!

The penultimate day had been spent with ‘The Clan’ - it was great to catch up with my Uncle Stuart - so I’d been glad to take a break from the photoshoots. Indeed, the whole trip had been fantastic, relaxing on the farm or wandering the beaches with family and friends. Ahead of the final morning, however, it did occur to me that most of my grand photographic schemes remained little more than pipedreams. The campaign had started inauspiciously, of course, with that wet and windy lunar eclipse episode. And my subsequent photoshoots - with the possible exception of the Hay Rake - hadn’t quite yielded the desired results.

I realised that I hadn’t even wangled a single coastal shoot (snapshots aside), including my number one target heading into the holiday. I now had one last chance to put this right… but with cloud and commitments later in the day, it would mean another early start. And I don’t say that lightly, for people who know me will confirm that I’m really not a morning person. I can barely manage breakfast, so it takes an awful lot to get me up and about before dawn. Something dramatic, like a lunar eclipse. Or Sunrise at Seacliff…

I should rewind slightly at this point and explain that Seacliff was my favourite beach as a child, enjoying an exalted position even amongst its East Lothian rivals. Many years and much mileage later, I’m officially too mature to have favourites… but unofficially, if pushed, Seacliff would still be it!

The magic begins before you even arrive; a private track winds through mysterious woods, whose ghosts include a ruined mansion house. The bay itself holds a magnificent stretch of golden sand, backed by trees and cliffs. But the thing that makes the place unique is the interest in the rocks at either end: to the west, a tiny hidden harbour hewn from a sandstone bluff; to the east, a tower with cross marking a reef which is accessible only at low tide. And the cherry on the cake: unrivalled views of the Bass Rock and Tantallon Castle, both of which were much-loved childhood fantasy locations. Even now, seen through the lens of my newfound photographic worldview, they are firmly in the (Scottish) Premier League of iconic subjects.

Seacliff is so good, in fact, that I would end up visiting twice that day (returning later with my holiday companions). I’ll concentrate on this second visit first, just to set the scene…

Given my sentiment about Seacliff - and that old maxim to shoot what you love (photographically speaking) - it’s perhaps unsurprising that my early morning sojourn turned out to be the most satisfying shoot I’ve ever done. And in case that sounds immodest, I’m not talking about the photos themselves (which can always be improved)… I mean the act of simply being there, of watching daylight smudge the horizon and bathe the gently lapping surf. With time (and tide) on my side, I could afford to just stop and immerse myself in it (the experience, not the tide!).

But this is supposed to be a gallery, so I should probably let my images do most of the talking! :-)

Here Comes The Sun

In point of fact I only had three shots in mind for Seacliff, although I suspected that I would take a number of variations (which I did!). The first of my prime targets was the sunrise, which I knew would occur at 4:48am sharp. Checking the angles in advance, I’d worked out roughly where to position myself on the beach for the sun to emerge directly behind the tower and cross on the bay’s eastern rocks… a long, straggly reef known as St. Baldred’s Boat*.

In the event, a bank of dark cloud hugged the horizon and obscured the sun’s initial upward arc. I therefore didn’t worry about aligning the sunrise directly with St. Baldred’s Cross (which would have been challenging in any case!), instead opting for a more balanced composition with cross to one side and sun to the other. I shot with a fast shutter speed (1/500th second) in order to pick out passing birds - I was curious to note that their wings sometimes seemed to mirror the shape of the cross!

*St. Baldred seems to be unusually popular around these parts. As well as the aforementioned ‘St. Baldred’s Boat’, a rocky recess above Seacliff beach is called ‘St. Baldred’s Cave’ (not to be confused with my later photography cave), while the ruins of ‘St. Baldred’s Chapel’ can be discerned across the water on the Bass (allegedly the site of Baldred’s death in 757AD). To join in the fun, a promontory round the corner to the south, beyond the dunes of Peffer Sands and Ravensheugh, is named ‘St. Baldred’s Cradle’; and for good measure, nearby Tyninghame House hosts ‘St. Baldred’s Church’ within its grounds. For a man who eschewed material possessions, and who died over 1,200 years ago, St. Baldred certainly seems to own a lot of real estate! :-0

High Tide at Tantallon

I mentioned above that the Seacliff Sunrise was one of three shots which I had in mind… the second was a view of Tantallon Castle from the vicinity of Seacliff Harbour. Hardly an original angle, I know, but a classic scene nonetheless. I also hoped to capture something distinctive in the foreground - something tidal, such as a rockpool. Maybe even a reflection or two (conditions permitting)!

Up until now I’d been using my Fuji X-T3 with Kase polarizer and long telephoto lens (100-400mm), but the time had come to switch to my wide-angle lens (18-55mm) for a few landscape shots of Tantallon. Or perhaps I should describe them as seascapes rather than landscapes?

I also began to experiment with my ND filters, blocking out some of the light in order to capture longer exposures and smooth out the already-calm stretches of sea-water. I was aiming for a dream-like quality, which I hoped would convey my feelings for the place. And combined with the polarizer (plus a little trial and error), the long exposures might even help to tease out the odd reflection…

All About That Bass

It would have been remiss of me not to also give the Bass the wide angle, long exposure treatment… so here it is for posterity, volcanically plugging the Firth of Forth as it merges into the North Sea:

From Sandstone to Brimstone - The Curious Case of Seacliff Harbour

Seacliff’s wee harbour is easy to miss, being tucked away at the base of a rocky bluff which is itself marooned at high tide. (Known as The Gegan - meaning Churchman’s Haven - this bluff is yet another tribute to the ever-popular St. Baldred!)

With a 3-metre entrance, this is reputedly Scotland’s (and the UK’s) smallest harbour. Nonetheless, it’s surprisingly deep, and must have immersed a vast amount of labour when blasted out of the old red sandstone in 1890, using (literally) cutting-edge technology of the time - steam engine and compressed air!

The harbour remains operative, although some of the surrounding paraphernalia - a slipway, steps, a bathing pool - is gradually being re-claimed by time and tide. It’s a fascinating place, and testimony to the vision of the then-owner of Seacliff House, Andrew Laidlay (yes, I’ve been googling!).

I always imagine the Victorian residents of Seacliff estate picnicking and bathing down here on a fine summer’s day, like a well-to-do family from an Agatha Christie drama. Hopefully a happy drama, without the intrigue and murder - although Andrew Laidlay was tragically killed when Seacliff House burnt down in 1907, so perhaps there are a few skeletons in the closet after all!

I’ve mentioned that I had three prime target shots in mind for Seacliff, and so far - amongst all the variations - I’ve presented only two of them. (You might have your own favourites from the batch above, but I think I’ll nominate Let There Be Light and Tantallon Tidal Reflections…)

My third target shot was something of a wild-card, which I wasn’t sure would even be possible. Its location was further round the coast, beyond Seacliff’s western headland: the spot was secluded and often inaccessible, each high tide pulling up a relentless watery barrier. And that morning’s high tide was only just starting to properly recede.

With plenty of shots in the bag and time now running short, I almost didn’t bother to investigate. Yet I was conscious that opportunities like this don’t come around very often…

In Search of Schrödinger’s Cave

(If theoretical physics isn’t your thing, please bear with me for just a couple of paragraphs… and if it is your thing, please excuse my flippant over-simplifications!) :-)

Some readers may be familiar with the concept of Schrödinger’s Cat, a thought experiment which highlights an absurd quirk of quantum physics. It references the wacky world of sub-atomic particles, and their curious habit of behaving as waves - defined only as ghostly probability distributions - until a friendly physicist decides to measure their precise position. In the experiment, this small-scale uncertainty is shoe-horned into our everyday reality by shutting a cat in a box with a vial of poison, which is released if a random sub-atomic event (such as radioactive decay) triggers a dastardly device for breaking the glass. According to something called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the cat is both alive and dead - each outcome reduced to a fuzzy blur of chance - until an observer actually opens the box and forces the hand of fate.

Strange as it may sound, I detected an echo of Schrödinger’s Cat in my third Seacliff target shot. (Before I explain further, I should stress that no cats were harmed, either by me or by the late Erwin Schrödinger, in the course of these musings…)

Some weeks before departing for East Lothian, while thinking of things to photograph, I remembered a secret cave which I’d explored maybe once or twice during childhood coastal rambles with my Dad. When I say secret, I should qualify that it’s hidden in plain sight from the tourist-trodden battlements of Tantallon… but a precipice bars progress from the castle, and when actually down by the shore (at Seacliff, say) the cave is tucked away out of sight. As mentioned, it’s also not particularly easy of access - the high tide washes right in, while low water leaves a slippery approach of wet rock and seaweed. This was starting to sound like a challenge!

Now it may sound obvious, but caves can be great for framing glimpses of the outside world through their often twisted mouths. Admittedly it’s a cliché - some might say a well-worn sub-genre of landscape photography - but clichés usually become that way for a reason. So I started to think about the secret cave more and more as our holiday approached, consulting maps and old photos to check the angles. I quickly ruled out an alignment with Tantallon, but the Bass Rock looked more promising. It was almost (but not quite) where I thought the lines of the cave were converging.

Curiously, a quick online photo search failed to uncover any pictures of the Bass from my secret cave. This was both good and bad. It was good because it meant that I might have discovered a ‘new’ location from which to photograph the Bass, leading to the Holy Grail of an original composition (or at least a seldom-seen one). But more realistically, it was bad because the lack of existing pictures indicated that the cave alignment - and therefore the composition itself - probably didn’t exist. Or did it?

But as I exited the cave I decided to check out the side wall at the far left, which offered the only possible angle on my target. And there, as I pressed my head up against the dripping rock, two things happened. Firstly, a protrusion on the wall in front of me constricted the cave’s entrance into a weird jagged slither. And secondly, the Bass slid slap-bang toward the centre of this slither, as though sailing proudly yet covertly into the spotlight. I’m tempted to say that it stood out in Bas(s)-relief!

So perhaps the Bass was simultaneously there and not there after all, as if Schrödinger’s conundrum hovered in a perpetual state of confusion? I must admit that the philosophy of quantum physics was far from my mind at the time though, as I’d finally found my composition and just needed to capture it!

The tricky part was setting up my tripod against that cave wall, its legs splayed out haphazardly across boulders and seaweed. And I did need the tripod, as I’d settled on another long exposure (of around half a minute). This was mostly to continue my theme of the silky-smooth sea, but also - less romantically - so I could ‘shoot through’ the flies and midges which crowded the seaweed and flitted in front of my lens. But the final steps steadily came together, and shortly afterwards - by now it was 8:40am - the shot was in the can.

Before I present the picture, let me just say that I know I’ve milked it slightly - I do sometimes love the story behind an image, which is what these photoshoots are all about. But the danger is that I’ve over-egged the pudding and set expectations too high. At the end of the day, it’s just a photo… and that’s fine, for the background story is about the thrill of the chase, however the image ultimately turns out. Perhaps I should have teed it up and not taken the shot, like Sean Penn’s photojournalist in that Secret Life of Walter Mitty movie. And actually, after my lunar eclipse fiasco earlier in the week, I was grateful just to have something to tee up in the first place.

Anyway, enough of my rambling… as I’ve said above, it is what it is. I hope you like it! :-)

A Parting Question (to follow my Parting Shot!)

Before we leave East Lothian and once again head south, let me just acknowledge that the title of this section - The East Lothian Question - isn’t purely a weak political pun. (For those who wish to investigate, google The West Lothian Question… but please don’t expect any belly laughs!)

So what actually is the East Lothian Question? Well, judging by the fun and relaxation that we enjoyed on holiday, it’s quite simple: When are we moving?! ;-)

We’re back home in Devon now, into a summery June and jam-packed with mad dogs in the midday sun. (I won’t mention the Englishman!)

This is very much a quick garden snapshot (for which I borrowed Karen’s wee Canon point-and-shoot)… but I felt bad that Moogie had been excluded from the East Lothian collection, so was keen to get her back into the action. Also, I quite liked the ad-hoc arrangement of the doggies, with their fleeting complementary poses!

In terms of the background story… our friends and kind canine carers, Vicky and Carina, had visited our Devon home with Vicky’s dog Blacky, forming a trio of Caribbean rescue pooches from the same wee island of St. Eustatius (a.k.a. Statia). They were evidently at home in the summer sunshine, having a whale of a time and generally keeping everyone on their toes! :-)

Moogie’s solo turn in the spotlight came a week later, when I again borrowed Karen’s wee camera to document a tree branch which had come down in our garden during a rainy spell. Moo not only photo-bombed the shot, she even stared off into the middle distance like a pro. I’ll need to have a word about her relentless posing! ;-)

Still, no matter… I think there’s a lesson in humility here, as Karen had asked me to pack her humble Canon point-and-shoot as a counterpoint to my fancy paraphernalia. I’m sure you can see where this is going; we might only ever use Karen’s Canon on auto, but the built-in zoom and flash would be worth their (modest) weight in gold. I would once again make extensive use of it throughout the day, shared of course with its rightful (and excited) owner!

And in the end, if I’m honest, I was glad to fall back on the trusty old point-and-shoot approach. The pressure was off… and anyway, in most circumstances, a high-end camera shouldn’t be needed to capture effective images (else the problem is with the photographer and not the camera!). And although I couldn’t control the shutter speed (which needs to be fast to freeze speeding wildlife), I was happy to experiment with blurring in-flight birds to better convey that sense of movement - sometimes even veering into the abstract.

I suppose you might say that our day’s photography was conducted on a wing and a (bird of) prayer! Regardless, below are a few highlights…

(I should credit Karen with pics #2, 6 & 13, the latter capturing my long-awaited encounter with the famed Norwegian Blue Chilean Blue… that’s a live eagle, not a dead parrot!) :-)

Two days after our Yarak Birds of Prey experience, Karen and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary with an afternoon beside the river at Bickleigh (set within the beautiful Exe Valley).

Before continuing, I should explain that it was never my intention to record personal milestones on this website… firstly because they are indeed personal, and secondly because this website’s main purpose is to display an evolving portfolio of landscape imagery. Or for ‘landscapes’, read seascapes / wildlife / macro / astro - admittedly a mish-mash, but definitely stopping short of casual snaps and family selfies!

Increasingly, though, I’ve become drawn to the narratives which underpin the imagery, whether through my illustrated ‘blogs’ or the running commentary which hopefully gives some context to this 2022 gallery. So in a sense, the current page is morphing into a kind of photographic diary of my year. Our anniversary is clearly an important part of that.

Now having said all that, I do think I need to reverse this trend (at least partially), and to make my photographic output more creative and concise. When the ad-hoc point-and-shoot pics start to outnumber the contributions from planned photoshoots, it’s probably an indication that I’m falling off the wagon and into the trap of compulsive documentation. But prior to rectifying this, I should acknowledge one more time that the most meaningful pictures are not necessarily the most technically accomplished.

So I’m going to present just a couple of anniversary plates - and I use the word plates advisedly (though slightly grandly), because you’ll notice that they are collages rather than individual images. This too represents something of a throwback for me, as I’ve previously discussed my archive collages here and explained that I’m phasing them out as my photography becomes more targeted. What I didn’t say is that I’m making an exception for our anniversaries, in which an annual snapshot is added each year to a past-and-present ‘rolling’ composite. Or at least, that’s my intention while fates are kind and I can still run my old Picasa photo editing tool…

There is, necessarily, a break in my Fuji X-T3 photography while I’ve been processing our Yarak and anniversary imagery. But actually, that’s not the only reason… my decision to call this anniversary section Love is Contagious is more irreverent than romantic, as our celebratory trip to Bickleigh would prove to be the last day of freedom for Karen and I before we both succumbed to the dreaded Covid! :-(

So after all of the lockdown measures and social distancing; the travel restrictions and masks and inoculations; the two-and-a-half year game of cat and mouse - after all of that, here it was at last. And just to rub it in, our bout coincided with a record-breaking UK heatwave!

As I write this (two weeks on), we’re hopefully emerging from it stronger, with a revitalised wish that everyone enjoys their chosen escapades while staying safe as best they can. :-)

I was pleased to resume my Fuji X-T3 photography a week or so into August, initially venturing no further than our Devon back garden.

Visiting the garden may sound like a lazy option - and in some ways it is - yet there’s no finer place to spend a sunny Saturday morning armed with a macro lens (and to be pedantic, a 1.4x teleconverter). It certainly makes for a nice short commute, with the wee beasties putting in most of the leg work (or wing work)! :-)

For a beginner like me, the end result is delightfully random. Or at least, somewhere between random and experimental. And because I profess no particular expertise in ICM (quite the reverse, in fact), I present the following images as curiosities rather than the finished article. I’m also aware that this style of photography isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, even amongst those whose tea is of the psychedelic variety. Still, it’s good to shake things up occasionally… and if anyone is on the lookout for cheap 1970s wallpaper, please just let me know! ;-)

Before moving away from wee garden beasties, I should thank Karen’s friend Janet for identifying an exotic visitor to our buddleia bush. This is the Jersey Tiger Moth, whose distinctive markings lend it a vibrancy and panache more usually associated with butterflies.

I must admit that I find moths and butterflies quite difficult to photograph with my macro lens. This is possibly because it’s tricky pinpointing their tiny head/eyes, while their wings quickly recede from the narrow plane of focus (which is sometimes desired, sometimes not). Nonetheless, with so much excitement being generated, it seemed churlish not to give it a go… so these images aren’t necessarily my best, but they hopefully show what a colourful character the tiger moth really is. And if nothing else, they serve as testimony to Janet and Karen’s infectious enthusiasm! :-)

Introducing The Apostles

As summer progressed I found myself on the lookout for subjects which could form an interesting foreground to a low sun or moon, or might perhaps enhance a twilight or night sky. Something either rustic or natural, like a tumbledown barn (for instance)… or that trusty old favourite, a lone tree.

I certainly spotted plenty of trees in my rural corner of Devon, many of them looking particularly fine in their summer greenery. Yet on closer inspection, few of them measured up to my self-imposed small print: a subject which stands out on a local horizon; few surrounding distractions; relatively easy of access; and allowing an angle of view suitably aligned with (say) a sunrise or sunset.

It was when driving through the nearby Culm Valley - a route which I’ve taken countless times to work (though rarely since Covid) - that I finally paid attention to a neat row of three trees which marks a distant horizon of fields and downland. They were miles away, and therefore tiny, yet they clearly had potential if only I could locate them ‘on the ground’, as it were.

My first attempt at photographing these trees didn’t actually involve locating them at all - I simply parked myself in the valley with long lens set at maximum zoom, hoping that the sun would magically set behind them. But the sun was about 15 degrees out, and evidently moving further away each evening as midsummer receded. The lovely pink clouds weren’t quite in the right place either, so I dismantled my tripod and returned home without taking a shot. This clearly needed a re-think! :-(

My re-think ended up involving maps, compass bearings and eventually Google satellite imagery, all in a quest to pinpoint the three trees and make them significantly larger in frame. They turned out to reside in grassland high on the slopes of a rolling summit called Christ Cross, our local Marilyn which I’d visited with family some years earlier. In keeping with the Christ Cross moniker, I came to christen these trees The Three Apostles - although Karen pointed out that The Holy Trinity may be better (indeed, there’s a nearby hamlet called Trinity). So, take your pick (or make up your own)!

Before deigning to photograph The Three Apostles / Holy Trinity at close quarters, I decided to scout the lie of the land. So I carried out a sneaky reconnaissance one Saturday afternoon, navigating the single-track country lanes, pulling up on a dusty verge, and eventually locating my field of grass. And there the trees were, standing proudly in a row just down from the brow of the hill. Gazing heavenward, like The Three Wise Men (as I also could have called them)! :-)

I’d brought along my old Fuji bridge camera, but again didn’t take a shot… my aim was simply to circle the trees on foot and work out the best angles, checking different compositions and zoom levels through the viewfinder. Should I shoot the row from below, or obliquely from the side (which gave the illusion of the trees reducing in size, like the Three Bears from Goldilocks)? Either way, this recce would give me a head start when I returned with my newer camera kit in more conducive light… meaning, for sunset that evening!

Yet sunset was again unkind. The trees were already in shadow by the time I arrived, and the sky behind them was bland. I considered waiting for the stars to emerge, but to be honest was now feeling a little deflated - this was my third encounter with The Three Apostles, and I still had zero shots to show for it. Anyway, it had dawned on me that the alignment of the trees was better suited to sunrise than sunset. So I traipsed off home once more, vowing to return early the following morning. I also made a note to re-check The Photographer’s Ephemeris, which confirmed a 5:59am sunrise at an angle of 65 degrees from North.

I surprised myself by rising before my alarm, creeping out into darkness for my fourth encounter - or my third close encounter - with The Three Apostles. This time, despite the unholy hour, I felt more hopeful. I also felt that this particular sunrise might hold special significance, as it would herald the final day of the prolonged heatwave which had baked most of the UK for much of the summer. The sun was a hot topic, both literally and figuratively… now I just had to lurk in a shadowy hedge and await its reappearance! :-0

A Devon Dawn - From Twilight to Daylight

A quick technical note… the ‘starburst’ diffraction effect when shooting the sun can be achieved by setting a narrow aperture, with some of the above images stopped down as low as f22. However, the final two shots still display a small starburst at f13/14 (mid-range apertures generally leading to sharper results), so experimentation seems to be the key!

And talking of experimentation…

Somebody Call a Cab - It’s ICM Again!

It turns out that I wasn’t joking when I suggested that my sunflower ICM shots (featuring Intentional Camera Movement) wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea. Reviews have been stinging, and that’s just from immediate family! Still, I’m a glutton for punishment, so I’ve given it one more surrealist stab (with apologies to sufferers of motion sickness!)*… :-(

*I mean this in a light-hearted spirit of self-deprecation… all honest opinions are welcomed and respected!  :-)

Oh, and if you’ve stayed at a UK Premier Inn over the past few years and viewed the wall art, my ICM image of The Three Apostles may look strangely familiar. For legal reasons, I should add that I only actually recognised this similarity after the event (unless of course there’s something subliminal going on)! :-0

As well as being the last hurrah of summer (so to speak), the late August Bank Holiday weekend coincided with a New Moon - ensuring dark skies and an opportunity to re-visit The Three Apostles with some starry shots in mind. These days, it’s the closest thing I get to a wild night out! ;-)

In the event, conditions over the weekend were cloudier than I’d wished for. This caused me to bide my time, staying home on the Friday and Saturday nights in the hope of better conditions later on. The Sunday night was still not ideal, but this was make or break time - my last chance to gallivant around after bedtime without work the following morning - so off I went, tootling through the pitch-black country lanes and parking up on my now-familiar dusty verge.

At this point, I should explain that I’ve only ever dabbled in astrophotography. It’s quite a specialised technical genre, and my Fuji X-T3 isn’t really designed for low-light conditions (it has a crop sensor, which can be restrictive when light is at a premium). Nonetheless, with the right manual settings and a sense of patient adventure, I hoped to have some fun. Whatever the outcome, there’s definitely a magical feeling - something literally cosmic - about venturing out, gazing heavenward and soaking up the starlight! :-)

Having said that, the amount of cloud cover did prompt a slight re-think as I reached my darkened field. The Milky Way’s galactic core was clearly in an elusive mood (that’s galactic cores for you!), while I also struggled to identify Polaris, the Northern Pole Star. The Pole Star is significant because it remains fixed in the night sky, forming an anchor about which - given a long enough exposure - other stars swirl in ethereal concentric rings. Yet I couldn’t even find the distinctive frame of The Plough, which can be used to locate Polaris. I therefore decided to abandon the idea of star trails altogether, and instead focus on the foreground trees - The Three Apostles - against whatever night-time backdrops presented themselves.

While these initial shots are OK (kind of), I felt that the images didn’t really ‘pop’. It seemed to me that more effective compositions could be found closer to the trees, perhaps picking them off singly or in pairs. This would enable the trees to feature more prominently, as well as being within range of my ‘light-painting’ - the process of standing off-camera and applying a brief directional flash using a torch. Yet without focus-stacking, I didn’t want to position my main subjects closer than the cusp of infinity focus (around 18 metres on my wide-angle lens). With a little luck, following this rule of thumb would enable both the foreground trees and the background stars to remain relatively sharp.

And talking of focus-stacking: although I’ve added my usual degree of post-processing using Lightroom, all of the images displayed here are basically as captured ‘in-camera’ - there has been no merging or blending. I’ve nothing against more elaborate processing when it’s called for (as it would be for star trails), but there’s something undeniably satisfying about capturing an image in the field rather than patching it together back home on the computer.

As for my astro compositions or ‘nightscapes’… almost without realising it, I ended up converging on the concept of nocturnal tree portraits (if that’s even a thing!). These are presented below. The first of them - possibly my favourite - features the view over the vale from the Central Apostle. I was initially wary of light pollution in this direction, although including some of the ground lights - such as the distant airport - hopefully helps to build up a richer story.

I finished by experimenting with a few other angles, before calling it a night and returning home to that more conventional nocturnal destination; the land of nod… ;-)

At the risk of sounding a bit X-Files, it’s an interesting paradox that much of the otherworldliness of being out there beneath the stars emanates from plain old Planet Earth. The darkness is an alien environment for most of us, and despite the apparent seclusion we’re clearly not alone in it. At unguarded moments I could sense eyes watching from the shadows, while birds flapped noisily in the treetops and unseen animals rustled and snuffled through hedges. So it was fitting that on one occasion my camera captured something strange in the long-exposure… a mysterious trail wending its way through the frame. I’m sure it’s mundane (in daylight, at least), but I quite liked the ghostly effect!

And for those who like synchronicity in the universe, it’s worth noting that my night-time snack on this photoshoot was - naturally - a bar of Galaxy! ;-)

• Introduction - Shooting the Canon

• The Beautiful South - Bennan Head and Black Cave

• Fool's Golden Hour - Missing the Point at Kingscross Point

• Meet Dino - From the Town of Bedrock

• Kildonan Shoreline - Flora and Fauna

• Rosa and Sannox - Two Glens, Four Corbetts

• Spooky Mansion - Things That Go 'Bump' in the Night

• Monoliths in Monochrome - Ghosts of Machrie Moor

It’s appropriate that Isle of Arran sounds uncannily similar to I Love Arran, for the second half of September would herald our eagerly-awaited annual pilgrimage to this magical place.

With so many memories here over the years - not to mention all of the previous photographs and webpage musings - the island probably needs no further introduction from me this time around. So my intent is to present a selection of new images with minimal ramblings.*

*UPDATE: as ever, I’ve rambled on slightly more than intended… sorry! :-(

The holiday snaps presented in this section effectively span our fortnight on Arran, happily marking our friend Melissa’s visit during the middle weekend. As illustrated above (and as credited), some of these shots were taken by Mel (on her mobile phone) or by Karen (on her Canon or mobile phone)… heartfelt thanks are extended to both! :-)

On Arran, the lure of the sea is ever-present. Yet even by island standards, we were lucky to be staying so close to this lovely wee Kildonan beach (above)… somewhere for the doggies to stretch their legs and sharpen their claws! :-)

For better or worse, here are the fruits of my actual ‘photoshoots’ - starting down at the south end of the island and gradually working my way up (with a few twists and turns along the way!)…

This holiday again saw us staying at Kildonan, situated on Arran’s far southern shore with fine views across the water to Pladda and Ailsa Craig. Being a favoured location, we’d explored the Kildonan shoreline reasonably well over the years - however, I’d never previously achieved my ambition of visiting Arran’s true southern extremity, the remote bastion of Bennan Head.

Although prominent in westerly views from Kildonan, and apparently within easy reach, Bennan Head is guarded by a treacherous boulder field which is swept by successive high tides. And the excitement doesn’t end there, for the headland itself harbours the secret lair of Black Cave - Arran’s largest cavern - which forms a natural focus for any expedition to make it this far. So it was that, prepped for adventure, I set off before dawn on our second morning to see what I could find…

My approach walk along the shoreline was unjustly given short shrift, as I’d explored the initial stages on previous holidays and wanted to press on to the headland. Yet here are volcanic rocks, sandy beaches, grassy fields, waterfalls, even a dinosaur footprint (of which more later)… not to mention an abundance of post-Triassic wildlife, from herons and seals to swans and otters (if you’re cautious and lucky!). I’m sorry to say that I passed most of it by. I did, however, pause to capture Pladda Lighthouse through a hole in one of the igneous dykes which swarm this stretch of coast. A family of seals proved to be equally photogenic, despite the grey pre-dawn light. But I was soon grappling with those notorious boulders - some the size of cars - which guard the final approach to Bennan Head. Then the sea and cliff converged, almost pinching my route out of existence, before I clumsily inched round the headland which I hoped would harbour the cave… and sure enough, there it was at last! :-0

The final image from my southern shoreline exploration is actually a 180-degree panorama, stitched together from six separate images. In retrospect, perhaps I should have created this pano from vertical shots rather than horizontal, in order to include the peak of Bennan Head. However, its exclusion was a conscious decision at the time. Including the full height of the headland would have left a lot of empty sky in the end product, and anyway I find vertical panoramas quite a faff… not ideal when balanced with tripod on a small rock in the sea! It always seems easy after the event, but at the time I was doubtful that anything would come out at all, or even that my camera and I would make it back to shore in one piece. Thankfully, all’s well that ends well! :-0

I know I’ve visited this Arran dinosaur footprint before, and there are only so many ways that it can be photographed. However, this time I really think that I may have found the culprit… ;-)

As mentioned, the Kildonan shoreline has been (deservedly) well-trodden and much-photographed during previous holidays - so most of my beachcombing this time around was without camera in hand. Nonetheless, here are just a few ‘local’ shots to complement the above Bennan Head/Black Cave/Dinosaur sections…

By way of introduction, I should probably explain that a Corbett is a Scottish mountain whose summit lies between 2,500 and 3,000 feet in height (anything higher being a Munro). Arran has four Corbetts, which is not bad going for a wee island. After all, island peaks tend to rise directly from sea level (more or less), meaning that aspiring ascensionists are made to work for every inch.

Being small and full of character, it is often assumed that Corbetts are named for Ronnie, that much-loved Scottish comedy icon. They actually take their name from John Rooke Corbett, a member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club who first listed them in the 1920s. Still, I like to think that something of The Two Ronnies has rubbed off. For example, when I first visited Arran’s Tourist Information kiosk, asking to see the Four Corbetts, I was directed to a cutlery delivery van which circles the island’s perimeter road. They mistakenly thought I’d asked to see the Fork Orbits!

Given this potential for confusion, it pays to be clear about how to locate Arran’s highest and mightiest peaks. Let’s envisage their topography on a map, starting just north of Brodick Bay. Imagine a giant letter H, like you might find on a mountain rescue helipad. Or perhaps I should liken the H to a set of rugby posts, since we now want a persistent westerly gale to bend the top of the letter over to the right (or east). The peaks and granite ridges can then be found along the pen-strokes of the twirly H, with Goatfell (the highest of all) at lower right. Arran’s other three Corbetts are less famous but no less fine: Beinn Tarsuinn at lower left; Caisteal Abhail at upper left; and taking pride of place along the centre bar, the rocky hub of Cìr Mhòr.*

*As you might expect, the real-life topography features a number of side-flourishes and sub-peaks… but let’s not worry too much about those! :-)

Yet these mountains, as with the letter H, are only really defined by the empty space which surrounds them. Without this, they would be reduced to a meaningless blob of bedrock, or a blot of ink. And this is where the gaps in the H come in. The lower one is Glen Rosa, blazing a trail to Cìr Mhòr from the south; while the upper one is Glen Sannox, doing likewise from the north-east. The geology textbooks might call these glens classic U-shaped trenches, gouged out by Ice Age glaciers. While true, this does nothing to convey their beauty and grandeur… for taken together, Rosa and Sannox are surely the most effective pair of Glens since Messrs Campbell and Miller joined forces to release Rhinestone Cowboy / In The Mood as a double A-side.**

**I made this up, but it’s a nice thought! ;-)

I’d previously trodden Arran’s rocky ridges on a number of occasions - for trodden, read scraped, wriggled and wedged - so for this trip, I was happy to confine myself to the shelter and safety of the glens. One morning would be spent exploring Glen Rosa, the other Glen Sannox. And honestly, I really enjoyed just pottering around (or spuddling, as my family might say). It dawned on me that I’m usually rushing through these hallowed aisles at the start or end of some grand hill-walk, racing the clock and filled with either apprehension or fatigue. But now, if I wanted to while away an hour or two literally chilling in Glenrosa Water or the Sannox Burn, waiting for a squall to pass or the mist to lift from Cìr Mhòr’s summit towers, then I would do exactly that. It somehow felt more Zen. There might be nobody around for miles, yet I could never be lonely… in the midst of these mountains, I was amongst old friends. :-)

When I assert that I enjoyed just pottering around Arran’s glens, that’s true enough. It was a relief to avoid the exertion of a long ascent, not to mention the extreme technical difficulties of notorious black-spots such as the A’Chir Ridge (above Glen Rosa) or the Witch’s Step (above Glen Sannox). The fact is, these humble Corbetts have the character of proper Highland mountains, as befits their position on Scotland’s Highland Boundary Fault. Yet for this same reason, they do still beckon. You might justifiably say that they bristle with Alpine adventure!

Maybe one day I’ll re-tread the spiky summit of Cìr Mhòr, and perhaps even learn to navigate off it without becoming stuck in a near-vertical gully (a fate which has befallen both of my previous ascents). But if I do, it certainly won’t be with tripod and full camera gear in tow! ;-)

With Hallowe’en fast approaching, it was appropriate that my final couple of Arran photoshoots both contained something spooky - if not downright ghoulish! :-0

Firstly - and perhaps most creepily of all - I’d like to present an ad-hoc night-time shoot, conducted at almost 1am outside our local ‘haunted house’ on the Kildonan shore. This grand residence is officially called Drimla Lodge, though during successive visits to the area we’ve come to affectionately know it as Spooky Mansion. Maybe we’ve read too much Stephen King, or (more embarrassingly) watched too much Scooby Doo? Whatever the reason, this place now occupied a shadowy corner of our minds. And on this particular evening, the combination of a deserted old house and a moonless starry night proved irresistible to my camera.

In the event, serendipity was to have the last laugh. My attempted ‘astro’ shot comprised a 15-second exposure (to capture the stars), during which time I illuminated Spooky Mansion for just a couple of seconds using a torch. Yet I had an eerie feeling that I was being watched, and during the brief spell of ‘light-painting’ noticed a pair of glowing eyes in the vicinity of the bushes. Momentarily diverting the torch beam, I was surprised to see a cat sat just in front of me, intently scrutinizing my every move. It was plunged into blackness when I killed the beam, and had mysteriously disappeared by the time the exposure was complete.

I beat a hasty retreat, more than a little freaked out. But the twist would only become apparent later… upon viewing the resulting picture, I found that the cat had not only positioned itself neatly in the bottom-right corner of my image, it had moved through the frame in such a way as to leave a ghostly imprint. Or perhaps this uncanny trace wasn’t an artifact of the long exposure after all, but evidence of Spooky Mansion’s genuine ghostly cat? Who can say for sure?! :-0

My last photoshoot of the holiday occurred on the penultimate evening, with our final day reserved for more traditional fayre: packing and horizontal rain!

The pen-penultimate evening (if that’s a thing) had yielded a spectacular sunset, which I’d equally spectacularly failed to take advantage of. I’d been tentatively exploring the Eas Mor Wood just above Kildonan, but captured only one shot (included above as Island Vista) before disappearing into the gloom of the forest. Here, I remained blissfully unaware that the clouds were being painted a fiery orange until it was too late - emerging into the open air, I watched the colours fade as I scrabbled in vain to find a suitable composition. So the following evening, as a final throw of the dice, I was determined to be ready if by some miracle the Sky Gods could conjure up a repeat performance.

My chosen venue was Machrie Moor, whose enigmatic Standing Stones lend an air of ancient mystery to Arran’s central west coast. A Machrie Stones sunset (or even a post-sunset astro shot) had been on my photographic ‘to-do’ list all holiday, so I was excited to be giving it a go.

Unfortunately, I became less excited as the walk-in progressed. I’d somehow developed a heavy cold, which didn’t combine well with a heavy rucksack. Don’t get me started on the cumbersome tripod! Still, I plodded past the first of the six stone circles, eager to reach the main megalithic complex. Then the light, which had been looking promising all afternoon, abruptly disappeared as the sun slid behind thick cloud on the western horizon. I ploughed on to the tallest set of stones and tramped the nearby moor in search of a composition, yet knew in my heart of hearts that the opportunity had gone. This was Kingscross Point all over again, except without the remainder of the holiday in which to be offered redemption. I might as well turn tail and leave! :-(

Sometimes, though, a quick change of plan - a spark of spontaneity - can re-energise things. OK, maybe ‘re-energise’ is over-stating things, as I certainly didn’t feel energetic. And admittedly, my revelation wasn’t exactly rocket science. But it suddenly struck me: if there’s no colour, don’t aim for colour. Try something else… like shooting the stones in moody monochrome! :-)

Maybe the phantom figure from my final composition (in which I’d entered the frame mid-exposure) is also a little over the top… but remember, I was still under the influence of Spooky Mansion, and Hallowe’en is just around the corner (or it was at the time)! :-0

That concludes my Arran 2022 gallery. (Unfortunately, the last-day storm - ending September with a bang - abated just in time to allow our ferry passage home!) :-(

I’m conscious that I’ve only really scratched the surface of the scenic attractions which this magical island has to offer… but that’s fine, as it’s important to allow space for rest and relaxation on these holidays. And besides, we have plenty of memories from previous visits, with the promise of more to come.

Talking of which… if anyone wishes to raid the archives, images from our earlier Arran trips can be found elsewhere on this website. The island’s fingerprints have brushed various pages, though my main collections comprise the historical Arran Composites 2017-19, hotly pursued by my Fuji X-T3 forays in the shape of Arran 2020 and Arran 2021 (precursors to the above Arran 2022 gallery). Happy viewing (should you choose to explore)!

Oh, and our next visit is already booked. Here’s to May 2023! ;-)

As usual, I found that my photography stalled for a while after returning from Arran. This is prime back-to-work season of course, on top of which any spare photo time is spent processing the recent holiday pictures (a ritual which naturally includes updating this website!). Psychologically, I sometimes wonder whether we feel a need to replay those carefree memories - to continue cherishing the moment - before moving on to pastures new (or maybe that’s just me?)!

Thankfully, by late October the lure of those autumnal reds and russets began to shade out the post-holiday blues. For many nature-lovers, this is actually the best time of year to venture forth into the great outdoors. Not being much of a woodland photographer, I must admit that I’ve never really made the most of it myself. But that was all the more reason to wander the leafy parkland of nearby Killerton Estate, shouldering my weighty camera bag though hopefully without the weight of expectation - for on this occasion, I had no specific plan!

With or without a plan, I felt that there was a certain synchronicity to re-visiting this venue in the autumn, as if it were some kind of seasonal sequel to my earlier spring explorations (see Keep Culm and Carry On, above). So here is just a small selection of images, which - taken together - hopefully illustrate the colours and the shapes of Killerton Estate…

This section - a brief Ode to the Autumn - actually comprises two separate mornings in and around Killerton; independent visits five days apart. The second trip was conceived because the first had seemed incomplete, garnering only the three shots shown above. I hadn’t made it down to Killerton House at all (having tramped in from the ‘Back Park’ at neighbouring Ellerhayes), while I’d chickened out of photographing a gnarly old horse chestnut tree (that old chestnut!) on account of a moat of thick brambles which barred access to - and indeed occupied - the necessary vantage point. Perhaps I should have another go, with an earlier start to boot?

It’s funny how the mind builds anticipation, but once I’d decided to re-visit Killerton I had visions of all sorts of wonderful lighting effects: a fiery sunrise turning the forest gold, wisps of morning mist, perhaps even a rainbow or two. I might as well have wished for unicorns, for the weekend inevitably dawned a dull grey (with stinging bouts of rain)! But this reality check is sometimes no bad thing, as it forces a little more creativity when searching for compositions - for example, teasing out some close-up detail which might otherwise be overlooked (what landscape photographers call intimate shots, as opposed to those obvious grand vistas).

Incidentally, spectacular light does exist, as it finally appeared at sunset that evening… when I was walking the dogs without camera or composition to hand. Such is the fickle nature of Sod’s Murphy’s Law! :-(

• Introduction - The Name of The Roseland

• Photographic Philosophies - Corny Sandscapes or Cornish Landscapes?

• Chapel of Rest - The Sunday House

• A Tale of Two Saints - Mawes and 'Justin Roseland'

• Twilight Challenge, Part 1 - Fraggle Rock Lighthouse

• Twilight Challenge, Part 2 - St. Mawes Castle

Our final holiday of the year - Christmas staycation notwithstanding - comprised a late November trip to Cornwall’s Roseland peninsula. Despite being regular visitors to Cornwall, we’d never previously stayed on the Roseland. We therefore looked forward to uncovering its quiet charms, tucked away on the secluded side of Falmouth’s huge natural harbour.

Now let me just say upfront that this was no ‘surf and sunshine’ venture; if you head to one of England’s most remote and exposed coasts as the dark end of autumn gives way to winter, you generally know what lies in store. But that’s OK… opportunities can usually be found to wander broad windswept beaches, to enjoy fine Cornish cuisine, and to generally switch off from the outside world. And besides, when the elements do start to batter the windows, there’s a certain cosy satisfaction in hunkering down and taking Shelter from the Storm (as Bob Dylan once put it).

This was also very much a family affair (as it should be), with any photo opportunities being almost incidental. I did manage three brief ‘photoshoots’ with my main Fuji X-T3 camera gear - of which more later - though all of the images from these introductory sections are basically holiday snaps, taken using Karen’s point-and-shoot Canon (which I’ve occasionally been known to steal borrow!).

If you’ll bear with me for a quick diversion, this might be a good time to clear up some confusion (mostly my own!) about my differing photographic philosophies…

The main myth here is the common assumption that good cameras produce good photos, while less sophisticated cameras (to tread diplomatically) equate to poorer fayre. And while there’s clearly some correlation between good cameras and good photos - particularly if working in a specialised genre - I’d argue that, in general, the photographer and their mindset is a much more significant factor. After all, the camera doesn’t choose a composition or decide when to release the shutter - the photographer does.

Why is it fine, I hear you ask? Well, let’s face it, that viral jaw-dropper on Instagram is probably photoshopped - or, to be less cynical, shared by someone who’s been studying their craft and planning such a shot for years (with or without top-of-the-range equipment). Either way, don’t worry about it; for as someone wiser than I once said, Comparison is the Thief of Joy.

The truth is, no matter how proficient we might become behind the lens, there will always be someone out there who is technically better. More gifted, more dedicated (or fanatical), maybe just luckier. But that’s OK, for remember: each of us is uniquely suited to photograph what we love. And if other people love our images too, that’s purely a bonus.*

*Unless you’re a pro, of course, in which case forging a wider connection is a little more crucial! :-)

By contrast, my ‘photoshoots’ are - as the name suggests - all about planned photography. I will generally have specific subjects in mind, often researched in advance; I’ll aim to be on location at a precise time (perhaps early or late in the day), and will take care to fine-tune a particular composition or manual exposure. If I need to hang around for conditions to change, then so be it (the watching and waiting process is almost meditative). I’ll also shoot in RAW format, which captures more detail than JPEG but looks flat if unedited… leading to a greater emphasis on post-processing (conducted in Lightroom). Overall, my focus is less on generating an ad-hoc memento, and more on crafting something artistic (even if I generally fail in this highfalutin endeavour!).

As to which type of image is better - the family mementoes or the landscape art - well, that’s purely a matter of personal preference! ;-)

Speaking as someone who is trying to cut down on their total number of pictures (in theory favouring quality over quantity), I should start this section with a confession… whenever we go on holiday, I do tend to sneak in a quick shot of our rented accommodation! :-0

Given that the above section contains chapter and verse on my disparate photographic philosophies, it’s perhaps appropriate that The Sunday House allows these twin techniques to be compared - for it’s quite rare (I suspect) that I generate more or less the same image both as a snapshot and as part of a ‘photoshoot’. Yet here it does happen, with the exterior view of the chapel (specifically its western end, which was our particular hidey-hole).

I’ll also include an interior (family) snapshot of Sunday House West, as a kind-of ecclesiastical bonus… :-)

And here I can illustrate that I don’t define my ‘photoshoots’ by simply picking up a more expensive camera. If that were the case, I could have just replicated the above exterior chapel shot using my Fuji X-T3 instead of the Canon point-and-shoot. And it would have looked much the same, or perhaps not as good - for I probably wouldn’t have captured the story of Karen and the dogs entering the gate, or sunlight glinting off the top of the metal chimney flue. No, for my ‘photoshoot’ I wanted to tell an altogether different story, with less spontaneity but more planning and precision.

What I’d decided on, clear night sky permitting, was an ‘astro’ shot of the chapel. As a microcosm of our late November huddle, its mysteriously dark surrounds would ideally be offset by a friendly ‘cosy glow’ in the windows. And best of all - being a chapel - I envisaged the building symbolically positioned beneath the heavens, as though in the thrall of something vast and cosmic.

OK, so that last paragraph is laying it on a bit thick… in truth, I’d be content for the viewer to just see a pretty picture and move on. But you hopefully get the idea about ‘photoshoots’ prompting a certain type of mindset! ;-)

In reality, my ‘astro’ shoot turned out to be frustratingly fiddly. I was indeed blessed by clear skies just before midnight, yet a bright orange streetlight joined the glow of the chapel (plus my brief directional torchlight) to completely over-saturate the long exposure. For a while, it looked like being a no-go; I consoled myself that I had the shortest of walks ‘home’!

In the end I captured one exposure for the chapel and another for the stars, then blended the two in post-production using a combination of Lightroom and StarStax. Some might call it a faff. Still, it was an interesting experience, and I enjoyed being out there gazing heavenward (even if the chapel-bound dogs - and their slumbering Mum - were less enamoured of my late-night shenanigans!).

History and myth infuses the very fabric of Cornwall, from early Celtic and Pagan traditions through to the spread of Christianity and beyond. Evidence of this can often be found in the place names, keeping alive a proliferation of saints and perhaps allowing them (allegorically, at least) to bring solace to communities facing the harsh realities of the maritime and mining industries.

We’ve already encountered the haunt of St. Gerrans, and will shortly become acquainted with St. Anthony… but a number of other saints are commemorated in the names of neighbouring settlements across the Roseland peninsula. We visited a couple of these on family outings, as recorded by the happy ‘holiday snaps’ presented below - and each visit also served as a scouting mission for subsequent ‘photoshoots’, with varying degrees of success (as will soon become apparent!).

First off is St. Mawes, perhaps Roseland’s best-known coastal community, which occupies a strategic position across the water from Falmouth. So strategic, in fact, that Henry VIII commissioned the building of a castle here, designed to match Falmouth’s grand fortifications on the other (busier) side of the estuary.

Slightly less romantically - though of prime importance to hungry holidaymakers - St. Mawes was also the strategic home of our nearest Co-op! :-)

Next up on our tourist trail is St. Just-in-Roseland, a picturesque village tucked away ‘just’ inland from St. Mawes.

I think this one is named for St. Just, with the ‘Roseland’ tag intended to distinguish it from the settlement of the same name down near Land’s End. But who knows, maybe the saint’s name was actually Justin Roseland (who sounds like he belongs in a medieval boy-band)?

Either way, St. Just-in-Roseland is a special place, with one of the most iconic churches in the whole of Cornwall. It sits alongside a secluded arm of the Fal estuary, backed by wooded slopes and surrounded by a curiously higgledy-piggledy garden-cum-graveyard. Exotic plants abound amongst the twists and turns, paradoxically making this a place of vibrancy and life. I’m sure we didn’t see the grounds at their best - this was an overcast afternoon near the onset of winter - but still, a sense of beauty and tranquility remained evident.

As mentioned above, this Cornwall trip yielded three main ‘photoshoots’. One of these - the ‘astro’ Sunday House - has already been presented. The other two could each be described as a Twilight Challenge, a term which I first coined during our equivalent late autumn break of the previous year.

A Quick Flashback - Cornwall 2021…

Curiously, our late November Cornish sojourns of both 2021 and 2022 comprised 6-night stays which yielded three ‘photoshoots’ - two of which, on each trip, were Twilight Challenges. So, more by happenstance than design, quite a nice symmetry seems to have emerged! :-)

And Now Back to November 2022…

Maybe, one rainy day, I’ll go into more detail comparing and contrasting my respective Twilight Challenge results from 2021 and 2022. But for now, let’s cover my opening Cornish challenge of November 2022.

I’ll preface this with a quick caveat: what follows is quite a lengthy introduction, which the concluding photo possibly doesn’t warrant! But while I might be teeing up an anti-climax, I also feel that context and back-story can allow greater appreciation of the end result. I realise this approach isn’t for everybody, though. If it doesn’t feel like your ‘thing’ - and let’s face it, my musings may be less Magnum Opus, more Magnum ‘Opeless - then by all means skip ahead to the actual images. Either way, here we go (if you do come along for the ride, strap yourself in for the ‘Fraggle Rock’ experience!)…

A few miles on from our Gerrans chapel hideaway, the Roseland peninsula - or our particular arm of it - tapers to a halt and drops off into the Atlantic. This is called St. Anthony Head (another Cornish saint!), and is accessed via a single windy road (in both senses of the word windy) which leads to a National Trust car park alongside a cluster of wartime buildings. Now I hadn’t ever been here before, but my interest had been piqued by distant glimpses of the lighthouse which hunkers down at the foot of the headland.

Although formally named for St. Anthony Head itself, to me this guardian of the rocky shore will forever be known as Fraggle Rock Lighthouse. This probably gives away that I’m a child of 1980s TV, for whom the legend of Fraggle Rock looms large. The show featured a commune of muppet-like creatures - the eponymous Fraggles - who lived in subterranean caverns and embarked on various jolly japes, literally making a song and dance of their wholesome adventures. Their non-Fraggle friends included the local lighthouse keeper (Fulton Mackay) and his puppet dog, Sprocket. And the opening credits (at least for the UK version) began with an aerial view of Fulton Mackay’s lighthouse, the camera neatly zooming in through a window and down a tunnel to the muppet-laden, music-pumping bowels of Fraggle Rock.

Fast forward to the internet age, and the identity of the real-life venue is just a couple of clicks away: St. Anthony Head Lighthouse! :-)

Because this knowledge had somehow seeped into my consciousness - and because I’m still a big kid at heart - I spent much of my time on the Roseland peninsula with the Fraggle Rock theme tune looping round in my head. It was, in fact, the most insistent holiday earworm since we’d visited Tobermory (Mull) in 2018, mentally overdosing on both The Wombles and Balamory. Anyway, if you don’t happen to know the “Down at Fraggle Rock” ditty, I caution against looking it up on YouTube… it’s painfully catchy!

And yes, I’ve drifted off the point a bit there (Fraggle Rock will do that to you!), but I’m sure you’ve guessed where this is going… when it came to my first Twilight Challenge of the trip, the obvious choice was Fraggle Rock Lighthouse!

In saying this, I should reassure any sensibly mature readers that the Fraggles themselves will play almost no further part in this story (or its photos). To be honest, I think the venue is strong enough without them - for despite the above childhood regression, my adult self remains genuinely interested in lighthouses. In any case, I suspect the Fraggles were pensioned off when their lighthouse became automated and converted to holiday lets* (such is the march of progress!).

*Due to accessibility issues, my suggestion of booking this lighthouse accommodation has sadly been vetoed! :-(

But what of the ‘photoshoot’ - the Twilight Challenge - itself? Well, the first thing I’d need to know as daylight slipped away is where to stand in order to best frame the lighthouse. I’d done some basic research on this before the holiday had even begun, consulting a map and viewing some online imagery (including aerial shots of St. Anthony Head). It seemed to me that I should follow the footpath down to the lighthouse buildings and then go beyond the lighthouse for perhaps 50 to 100 yards, from where I could look back at it along the low cliffs which ring the headland. Although not the optimum angle for a sunset, this positioning would hopefully enable me to capture the whitewashed tower standing tall against a darkening sky. And crucially, the sea would also feature prominently - ideally a restless, heaving sea - highlighting the life-saving role which this lighthouse has performed daily since 1835.

In the event, my exploration of St. Anthony Head got off to an inauspicious start. Not only did I follow the wrong path from the car park (where was the sign to the lighthouse?), but a cloudburst soon peppered me with cold November rain. I took shelter in the lee of a nearby structure, which an information board told me was a World War II magazine building - ironically, I was seeking safety in a place designed to hold explosives!

Once the shower abated I retraced my steps and located the correct footpath, which wound down the hill toward the lighthouse. But here was the next problem: the lighthouse being an operational outpost of Trinity House, as well as hosting the aforementioned holiday lets, the area was guarded by a locked metal gate adorned with Keep Out signs. I’d half-anticipated this, but had hoped to circumvent any private property on the landward side and continue along the far shore. Sadly, I could now see that this wouldn’t be possible: the route was blocked by a thorny morass of steep ground and thick vegetation.

It goes without saying that the seaward side was even more perilous (hence the need for a lighthouse). And while I could have simply snapped the lighthouse through the bars of the gate, I felt that St. Anthony would have supported my quest for a slightly more exalted composition. I’d clearly reached an impasse! :-(

So I found myself trudging back up the hill with camera gear unpacked and daylight ebbing away. I harboured one last hope: to traverse the headland at a higher level and attempt to drop down to the sea beyond the lighthouse, before the coastline changed direction and rendered my target invisible. The vegetation remained impenetrable - tall, thick and spikey - but I found a high, narrow path which contoured round to a wartime lookout. It was one of those semi-ruined concrete structures which are unsightly yet historic, prompting me to pause and perhaps gain some perspective (both literally and metaphorically).

The onward path seemed to curve inland, so I decided - somewhat reluctantly - to call it a day and beat a retreat. After all, I’d noticed a sign back at the car park announcing that the gates would be locked at sundown. Interesting as this place was, I didn’t want to be shut in all night (or face a long, dark walk back to Gerrans)!

Before leaving, I wandered round to the front of the lookout for a parting seaward view. I entered a small grassy clearing circled by gorse and brambles, through which the top of the lighthouse tower could be glimpsed below. Then, as I turned to depart, I noticed a faint track from the lookout which continued steeply downhill. It seemed to lead forlornly into the vegetation, as though forged by rabbits (or perhaps little Fraggles). But I was curious enough to trace it for a few paces, scrambling down and around a gorse bush, and saw that the track actually parted the vegetation and carried on. I followed suit. Down and down I went, over what now resembled overgrown granite steps, making a thin yet decisive beeline for the sea.

The track landed me on an old concrete foundation - presumably another wartime relic - and I realised that the route itself was probably a ghost of the early 1940s, linking coastal defences and just about kept alive by subsequent footfall. Immediately in front of me, the Atlantic crashed into the headland’s low cliffs… and over there, just to the right, stood St. Anthony’s Lighthouse. More by luck than judgement, I’d ended up exactly where I wanted to be for my Twilight Challenge! :-)

Yet the drama didn’t end there: I now had a photograph to take! This involved scrambling down onto rough jutting rocks to secure the right angle, breaking waves to either side. As I did so, the full force of seaborne wind and spray became apparent. I set up my tripod low to the ground, using my body to protect it from the gusts, and had to hang onto my rucksack to ensure that it didn’t blow away - or fall into the ocean - as I scrabbled for camera gear. The spray became a fine dynamic mist which constantly needed wiping from the lens, and then from my ND (Neutral Density) filter.

I’d fitted the filter to secure a long(ish) exposure - typically between 1.5 and 2 seconds - to give the churning sea a kind-of milky texture. I know this isn’t to everybody’s taste, but I wanted to experiment a little and perhaps lend the image a ‘painterly’ feel, mirroring some of the Cornish coastal scenes which I’d admired over the years on the walls of local art galleries or holiday homes.

Given the conditions, I was glad to secure any type of shot - and although the sunset wasn’t the best, I was pleased just to be there and to appreciate some graduation of colour in the sky.

Try as I might, though, I was sadly unable to detect any Fraggles. I had only their lighthouse for company - plus that blasted theme tune, lodged forever in my head! :-0

While the image presented above constitutes my main Twilight Challenge (Part 1) offering, I did take a couple of variations from the same vantage point.

Firstly, I took the equivalent shot with a faster shutter speed in order to capture breaking waves and the occasional passing seabird. I know that many people prefer this more naturalistic look, and indeed the topic of long versus short exposures is hotly debated amongst landscape/seascape photographers. Since art is subjective, I think it just boils down to personal preference!

And finally, I reverted to a longer exposure and introduced Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) to blur the scene. Again, not to everyone’s taste - but given the challenging conditions, I felt that a shaky, abstract vista might convey a sense of the elements and symbolise the chaotic nature of the shoot. ;-)

For completeness, each of these variations is shown below…

As a corollary to this shoot, I was reminded that it’s never too late for Sod’s Law to intervene. For no sooner had I packed up my camera gear - drying it as best I could and returning numbed hands to gloves - than the tower’s light began to flash. This is how I usually like to capture lighthouses; showing them in operation, as it were. Part of me wanted to set everything up again and re-do the shoot, though the prospect of re-visiting my precarious perch on the rocks was not an appealing one. Then I remembered that the car park gates were due to be locked at sundown, and my mind was made up: it was time to hotfoot it out of there, forging safe return passage up those wartime granite steps!

In the event I did escape the car park, and my camera had captured a small light in the tower… as though its lantern-wielding Fraggles had been warming up for the main show. I was able to further boost this subtle beacon in post-production, so all was not lost (despite Anthony apparently being the Patron Saint of Lost Things!). :-)

To cap it all, a strangely similar occurrence during my concluding Twilight Challenge would offer an unexpected chance of redemption…

My second and final Twilight Challenge enlivened the last evening of our holiday, providing a welcome reprieve from the melancholy ritual of packing.

Most of the day had been overcast, forming a murky grey backdrop to our otherwise happy beach wanderings. Yet the sun began to break through as the afternoon progressed, encouraging one final throw of the photographic dice.

My initial target for this shoot was St. Just-in-Roseland Church, which we’d enjoyed visiting with my parents a couple of days previously (as documented above). The thing that attracted me back was the prospect of viewing the church, set amongst its beautifully wooded gardens, across an adjacent arm of the Fal estuary. If I could capture the scene at something approaching high tide, the low sun might even be able to tease out some reflections.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. As soon as I reached St. Just and drove down the hill toward the estuary, it became apparent that the church grounds were firmly cast in shadow. Not only that, but the waters of the estuary had receded to reveal a mucky carpet of mud. And while mud can make for an interesting subject, it wasn’t exactly what I’d come for.

I still somehow hoped for a miracle - this was a holy place, after all - so I parked up and explored on foot, carting my camera gear around the fringe of the estuary. Yet every time I sized up a composition - across small gravel beaches; between tree trunks or boat masts - I was struck by how much better the shot would be with decent light and a rising tide. And actually, I might have proceeded if just one of these pre-conditions had been in my favour… but as things stood, I clearly couldn’t do justice to this special place.

Of course, I should have done my research - and indeed, I had gone online earlier to begin checking tide times and sunset angles (etc.). But then I reasoned that I only had one narrow window of opportunity in any case, so I may as well just turn up and trust to luck. He who dares wins. Or sometimes not! :-(

The question now was, what (if anything) could I do instead? Where could I go? I had nothing else prepared, no backup plan; I didn’t know the area particularly well, and daylight had all but faded.

I pondered this conundrum as I trudged back to the car, my redundant pack and tripod suddenly feeling much heavier. (I used to joke that a camera bag always feels heavier on the return leg due to the weight of the photos; but on this occasion, I hadn’t taken any!)

The answer - my Plan B - should have been obvious from the start, though it took a while for the penny to drop. I was looking for somewhere nearby, ideally somewhere I knew; it should be a Cornish icon; and (I now realised) should face west toward the setting sun. And I don’t know why I’m drawing out the tension, as the title of this section drops a pretty big spoiler… I would trundle on over to St. Mawes Castle, that iconic bastion of Henry VIII! :-)

The trouble was, I had wasted precious moments of this Twilight Challenge swanning around the shadows of St. Just-in-Roseland. By the time I reached St. Mawes and pulled into the castle car park, I could see the sun poised to drop beneath the horizon on the far side of the Fal estuary. More specifically, it was setting behind Falmouth’s Pendennis Castle (the larger ‘sister fortification’ of St. Mawes). This could be an arresting shot… not quite a classic sunset, but well worth capturing. There was clearly no further time to lose!

I grabbed my camera kit and rushed up a grassy embankment, hurriedly assembling my tripod. It then dawned on me that I’d pre-fitted a wide-angle lens to my Fuji X-T3, ready for the ill-fated Church shoot at St. Just - but here, a long telephoto would be great as a means of zooming right in on the Pendennis sunset. I could even add my 1.4x teleconverter for maximum reach, plus maybe a polarizer to reduce glare?

If anyone was watching at this point, I must have looked quite comical as I twitched this way and that. I began to retrieve the telephoto lens from my bag, then stopped; realised the sun was already setting; adjusted the tripod; returned to my wide-angle lens, zooming it as far as I could; re-adjusted the tripod; fine-tuned the composition; again considered the telephoto; decided I had no time to change lenses or apply filters (it was now or never!); dialled in the camera settings; and finally (though it all happened so quickly), took the shot.

I let out a breath - and, by the time I composed myself for a second attempt, the sun had slithered away. I’d have to make do with that one-time-only, semi-zoomed panic-fest…! :-0

To be honest, I regarded the Pendennis Sunset shot as mostly a bonus, making a mental note to return one day in a calmer state of mind (when I could change lenses to my heart’s content!). I’d really come here (belatedly) to photograph St. Mawes Castle, not Pendennis… so this is where I now turned my attention. And looking across to this main subject, I was gratified to see St. Anthony Head Lighthouse flashing away over the water. Perhaps my respective Twilight Challenges were destined to be more closely connected than I thought! :-)

The sun had set by this stage, of course, although it did still lend a fiery glow to some of the cloud. And much further afield, the same sun even picked out a distant crescent moon…

So from fearing a null return, my final Twilight Challenge had now garnered two distinct images. I was happy with this, although I also harboured a nagging doubt that neither had quite hit the mark.

In the case of the above St. Mawes Castle shot, I felt that the castle itself lacked a bit of punch. It was clearly the main subject, yet - being out of direct sunlight - seemed a little outcompeted by the colourful sky. I’d actually tried to ‘light-paint’ the castle by setting long exposures and running round with a torch, but there was too much ambient light for my torch-beam to have any impact. Besides, a nearby dog-walker was starting to give me funny looks… :-0

I told myself I was being too picky (which isn’t uncommon), and packed away my camera gear. As I did so, I quietly lamented the lack of floodlights on the castle (especially as I thought I’d remembered them from a previous swing-by). But still, it is what it is. Worse things happen at sea.

Before driving away I stole one last glance at the castle, as though gathering a final imprint of the holiday. And there, as if by magic, were the floodlights! :-)

Unlike my Fraggle Rock Lighthouse challenge - when the lighthouse beam had begun flashing at a similar late stage of proceedings - conditions were now amenable to photography. I had only to resurrect my tripod and camera a few paces from the car, with minimal wind and no pesky spray. One extra shot should take merely a few minutes, with the added advantage of delaying my dreaded end-of-holiday packing for a short while longer!

It was also noticeably darker by now, enabling the floodlit castle to really stand out. Various bobbing buoys had begun to blink in harmony with the lighthouse, joining the glow of the moon and the twinkling of distant ships. I found that another long exposure (this time of just under 10 seconds) enabled virtually all of the lights to be captured in a single image, irrespective of their disparate flashing patterns. And thankfully, no further eccentric light-painting gambits were necessary!

So this is how my final photographic foray of our Cornish adventure became my last-gasp submission for Twilight Challenge #2 (Nov 2022)… ;-)

In terms of photography (if nothing else), December would continue its tradition of being quite shy and retiring. I should probably have bucked this trend by taking advantage of the sharp, frosty snap which dominated the first half of the month, at one point deigning to deliver a rare sprinkling of snow. However, as is often the way, other priorities prevailed. For one thing I was busy re-living our freshly-woven Cornish adventures (see above), while see-sawing between work commitments and Christmas preparations. And, of course, the importance of good old-fashioned relaxation time shouldn’t be overlooked either! ;-)

Fast forward through Christmas itself - a quietly festive (camera-free) family affair - and that strange in-limbo period heralding the New Year found my thoughts returning to photographic ‘pastures new’. Or perhaps I should say ‘pastures old’, for the pasture in question was the parkland of Killerton Estate. As astute readers will recognise, this is an area which already features quite prominently in my local meanderings of 2022.

On this occasion, I intended to visit Killerton - or more precisely, the muddy river and wooded slopes of neighbouring Ellerhayes - purely as a reconnaissance exercise. My mission (should I choose to accept it) was to locate a foreground suitable for a later (2023) ‘astro’ photoshoot… ideally, the sort of scene which could be offset against a backdrop of long-exposure star trails.

Being solely a recce, my tripod, camera bag and most of its contents remained securely at home - however, I had lifted my Fuji X-T3 with wide-angle lens. This was for the purpose of framing up potential compositions, rather than actually capturing anything. I was determined that my lazy afternoon jaunt would be about exploration and planning, not stressing over pressing the shutter.

In the event, you can probably guess what happened… I saw a few scenes that I liked, so I photographed them! And why not (to coin a phrase)?

The first scene that attracted me - my favourite from this mini-shoot - conveyed a sense of hopeful melancholy which I felt epitomised Midwinter and the New Year. A kind of beauty in the bleakness, if that’s not overstating things. And it also taught me a couple of valuable lessons…

Lesson number 1 is to always lift your eyes to the heavens - away from our usual plane of focus - as wonder may await in the most unlikely of places. :-0

And lesson number 2 was learnt the hard way. If you do gaze skyward while walking the fields, remember to look down occasionally as well. Otherwise, sooner or later, you will surely step in a cowpat! :-(

Having ‘broken my duck’ with the Winter Moon Tree, I then caved in and created a handful of other images as the light began to fade. These served partly as test pieces, partly as a means of simply enjoying myself. So while these probably won’t be portfolio-quality shots, they are presented here as a kind-of farewell to 2022… and more significantly, as a promise of more to come.

Speaking of more to come, I’m not sure that I ever did find that ‘astro’ foreground which had prompted my reconnaissance in the first place. But that’s OK; if this was easy, it wouldn’t be such a meaningful challenge. My quest will continue as the calendar tips over into 2023! :-)

It’s a curious conundrum: the fact that photography, on a purely personal level, can tick so many boxes - it’s creative, absorbing, rewarding - while simultaneously opening the door to a sense of unworthiness or isolation (especially if lacking a certain level of human interaction). And I say this as an introvert, who is well accustomed to the concept of solitary pursuits. Maybe it’s because photography - like all artforms - relies on conveyed emotion, which implies a form of symbiosis between creator and consumer. Or put more simply: if nobody actually views a given photograph (or painting / poem / piece of prose, etc.), then what was the point of creating it?

Although I pose this conundrum rhetorically, I should probably attempt to answer it: there clearly is still a point, since every artist assumes the role of both creator and observer… and it only takes this one observer to ensure an emotional response. Ideally, the creative act even garners a sense of personal wellbeing, whether on a fleeting level or something altogether more profound. Yet I think it’s normal to harbour nagging doubts about these issues, or to seek some form of validation or acceptance. After all, there are so many fantastic photographs dotting social media - or other outlets of choice - that it’s all too easy to develop an acute case of imposter syndrome.

At this juncture - in case I’m misconstrued - it’s important to stress that I’m very grateful to all the friends and family members who have commented on my photos or ‘liked’ them on Facebook. Thank you: it really is much appreciated! And I never take this feedback for granted, for I recognise that one person’s passion (or obsession) is another person’s distraction (or annoyance).

I’m also in the fortunate position of not actually needing to chase subscribers or ‘likes’, since photography - for me - is a hobby and not a business. In other words, it is something that I embark on purely for my own enjoyment. If I’m able to share a degree of enthusiasm for my photographic subjects along the way, then that’s really just a bonus.

All of that being said, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: since building my website, the only unsolicited messages that it’s spawned are from spammers and scammers. It’s amazing what can emanate from the ether! The more convincing examples are courtesy of dodgy-sounding web designers offering to increase my online reach, while I won’t give air time to the less credulous ones (funny as they are!). Although I don’t touch these dubious ‘phishing’ e-mails with a proverbial barge pole, I must admit that some of them do have a point. Indeed, I’m grateful to the couple of friends who have hinted at the same thing: that I really need to invest some time and effort in the murky waters of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or suchlike. It may be a dark art, but this is apparently the path to climbing those online rankings and ensnaring more ‘hits’.

When it comes to sub-optimal webpages, I’m sorry to say that my current 2022 Gallery is Exhibit A. Yes, on one level - as a photographic journal of the year - I’m pleased with it. Yet there’s no denying that its very length, for a single webpage, has become unwieldy. I almost sense that I could write anything by this point, without impact or consequence, because so few readers will still be with me (if you are still here, thank you!). I’ve suspected this for some time, of course, though it was pretty much a case of “I’ve started, so I’ll finish!”. And while it helps to have broken down the content into sub-sections, each with a separate link, there are clearly limits to how far this should be taken.

Contrast this with my 2020 Gallery, which I compiled when creating this website in early 2021. There are some words of explanation, yet no running commentary. The photos themselves are allowed to dominate. It may be significant that 2020 was my first year of Fuji X-T3 ownership - my first year of something approaching ‘photoshoots’ (lockdown permitting) - so at the time, my 2020 Gallery was effectively my portfolio. My musings were siphoned off elsewhere across the website, to my archive pages and inaugural blog.

The concept of my 2020 Gallery naturally led to similar treatments in 2021 and 2022… yet in these subsequent years my galleries were built up piecemeal, almost in real time. For better or worse, this resulted in greater emphasis on the underlying stories. I even started to introduce holiday snaps, as though dabbling with online versions of ad-hoc family albums. And while all of this has merit, these merits are not necessarily compatible with the ethos of landscape photography.

So what do I propose? Well, in broad summary, I plan to implement the following steps as we move into 2023 (constructive feedback always welcome!):-

• I aim to initiate a new Portfolio page, containing my main photographic highlights. These will be strictly selected with an emphasis on ‘photoshoots’ rather than ‘snapshots’, accompanied by no text aside from a brief introduction and occasional captions or photo titles. (This was subsequently implemented during early 2023.)

• My Portfolio pictures will be grouped according to their underlying theme, irrespective of when or where they were taken. Thus, I might have sub-sections labelled (e.g.) Mountains, Coast, Countryside, Woodland, Waterfalls, Wildlife, Macro, Astro, Abstract… plus a section for New pictures (so recent work can be readily identified).

• Where applicable, my Portfolio images could even be presented at full resolution (instead of the reduced resolution featured elsewhere on this website). However, this might depend upon how much longer the increased file sizes take to load! (This idea is on hold for now, as I’m dubious about the net benefit!)

• My annual Gallery pages will be discontinued in their current format - the most immediate impact being that there will be no 2023 Gallery, unless perhaps it later takes the form of a yearly retrospective. (I did relent on this one slightly, introducing a 2023 Gallery - with just a sprinkling of background anecdotes - during the spring of that year!)

• My existing annual Gallery pages - namely, 2020 Gallery, 2021 Gallery and 2022 Gallery - will be retained, but moved from my website header menu into a new ‘collection’ page, imaginatively entitled Galleries (or similar). (This has subsequently been implemented, also featuring access to my all-new 2023 Gallery!)

• I will also consider an equivalent new home for my earlier (older) photographic archive pages, Hills and History and Boat-Trips and Composites. (This has subsequently been implemented via a new Archive page, with my underlying Hills and History collection being significantly expanded.)

• When I wish to write about my photoshoots or related themes - perhaps uploading images which don’t make my main Portfolio, or adding context to those which do - I will do so via a new Blog post. These new blogs should be relatively short, sharp and shareable, moving away from the ‘epic’ nature of my first three blogs (each of which took several months to create!).

• As a side-note, I understand that the act of creating regular new Blog posts - aside from the obvious benefit of generating bite-sized, shareable updates - should keep my site active in the eyes of online search engines (etc.).

• My ‘Homepage’, About the Photographer, will be adjusted to reflect my new website layout. I’ll also take the opportunity of thinning out my ‘Homepage’ slideshow sequences, which have become a wee bit bloated! (My slideshow selections were indeed suitably re-organised during the first few months of 2023!)

So there we have it! And while that concludes my photographic adventures of 2022, please do check out the rest of my (freshly revamped) website for more… :-)

It’s really a bit naughty of me to include this addendum, as it tips over my 2022 Gallery into 2023. However, my last entry of 2022 described a reconnaissance at Killerton Park, in which I searched the woodland fringes for a ‘star trail’ foreground - so I thought it might be nice to neatly round off this story. Besides, it’s my website and my rules… if anyone can break them, I suppose it’s me! :-)

The first thing to note is that, while my late December recce yielded the Winter Moon Tree mini-shoot (as described above), it failed to yield a suitable foreground for my main ‘astro’ objective. I therefore returned to the Killerton Estate during early January for a second recce, again starting from Ellerhayes Bridge. This time I took no pictures (despite being tempted by the swollen River Culm), instead calling an early halt when rain interrupted my quest. Yet as I trudged back to the car, I passed by the curious ring-fenced shrubbery which I’d dubbed The Hobbit Tree when I’d discovered it during the autumn. This previous visit had also seen the onset of rain, so I’d photographed the tree almost as an afterthought - literally a parting shot! That had been from above, but I was now approaching it from a lower angle; and although the tree didn’t quite fill the horizon as I’d have liked, I realised that it might just be isolated enough to qualify as an interesting ‘astro’ subject.

With no streetlights and no moon, it’s hard to overstate just how black it seemed as I left behind the neon bubble of my car and began a slanted ascent toward my destination. Both head-torch and hand-torch were at the ready, yet they seemed impotent against the smothering darkness. I was relieved that I’d been here before and staked out the route, else I’d probably still be out there searching for that Hobbity wee tree!

I’d originally envisaged this as a north-facing shoot, with the night sky rotating in tight concentric circles around the Pole Star. But as I looked north beyond the Hobbit Tree - which I’d only previously done in daylight - I realised that the scattered bright lights of the Culm Valley were quite distracting. Some of them actually shone through the tree, while the overall light pollution - although not severe - was enough to illuminate the lower part of the sky. This clearly wasn’t an ideal orientation after all.

With my single exposure safely in the can (touch woodland!), it was time to turn my attention to the star trails. Or the ‘shooting stars’, as you might say… as that’s what I’d be doing, and it’s also what I hoped the trails would look like! But I’d need to work fast, as my next problem was the cold…

As evidenced by the earlier snow flurry, this was a very chilly evening - minus 2.5 degrees C, according to the car thermometer - and my extremities really don’t fare well in Baltic temperatures (which I’ll admit is unfortunate for a mountain lover!). I’d needed to remove gloves to operate the camera, so my fingers were quickly becoming numb. My mission - should I choose to accept it - was to stave off the encroaching frost for long enough to generate a sequence of identical ‘astro’ shots, in which only the background stars shifted position. These shots would later be merged into one super-long exposure, with the initial floodlit Hobbit Tree at front and centre of the blend.

I settled on programming the camera to capture three 15-second exposures per minute, with 5-second gaps in between, for a total of 30 minutes.* I hoped this would be long enough to see some decent celestial movement, though without allowing everything (including me) to freeze up.

*There are technical reasons for not taking a giant 30-minute exposure in one shot, which I won’t go into here!

Now I’m not sure what other photographers do while waiting for a programmed photoshoot to finish - my favourite YouTubers are strangely silent on the matter - but for me, it entailed hopping around behind the tripod for half an hour in the pitch black. That is, sufficient hopping to keep vaguely warm, though not enough to shake the ground and wobble the camera. Perhaps I should have gone for a walk - even returned to the car - but the truth is, I was worried about leaving my gear to the mercy of those Highland Coos. I didn’t want to come back to a trampled camera, or - even worse- one which had swapped star trails for horned bovine selfies. Apparently, they’re buggers for that sort of thing after troughing a couple of late night drinks! ;-0

Anyhow, the camera trundled through its 90 shots while the world kept turning. The end result has been blended - if not mended - using Lightroom and StarStaX…

My final act of the photoshoot was to take a pic with the lens cap deliberately on, which the post-processing software could use as a control in removing any unwanted anomalies or artefacts. With this done, I packed away my camera, folded up my now-icy tripod, and glanced at my watch.

A quarter to midnight.

After planning this shoot for weeks, I’d beaten my birthday deadline with 15 minutes to spare…

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