South West England V - Cornwall

This day was spent exploring Cornwall, starting with a photo walk with students through Launceston, Cornwall. The first pause was at St Mary Magdalene's Church, which was a nice little building, built between 1511 and 1524. While it lacked the drama of a majestic Gothic cathedral, it was a nice pause in a day otherwise spent photographing outdoors.

The other major structure in Launceston is the ruins of the castle, built 2-4 years after the 1066 Norman invasion. I defaulted to my infrared camera when photographing the castle, as it pulled the stout stone walls out from the surrounding foliage, and shifted the focus of the image from the beautiful blue sky and green trees to the structure itself.

Digital infrared original, 4 image exposure blend, 3 frame stitch

After we left Launcesto, we drove onto Bodmin moor, eventually seeking out a roadhouse for lunch and a short break. While the students relaxed, I ventured out to the nearby river, and made an image looking under the bridge. 

The most notable feature of Bodmin moor (beside the landscape itself), are the ponies - fuzzy little horses that have little fear of car or people, and permit photographers to approach to a surprisingly close camera position. A great place for long lenses with large apertures.

It is hard to roam the Cornwall landscape and not make image of hedge rows; in this case, I put one directly in the foreground, as a frame for the landscape behind. The decision to keep the depth of field shallow, which I was hesitant about at the time, turned out to be a good decision, as it helps keep the background and the foreground from getting too confused.

On our drive homewards at the end of the day, we stopped in several small villages, seeking a place for dinner. We finally found it in a small river-crossing town, where we are a fabulous dinner (double servings of the mushroom soup!). After dinner, we walked around town before the last long stretch of driving, and I came across this beautiful fence - complete with mixed lighting from the early evening.

South West England IV - Mousehole to Landsend

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The last location of the day was Landsend, where the tour participants and I make the final images of the day, of the moon shimmering over the Celtic Sea.

South West England III - St Michael's Mount

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St Michael's Mount, also known colloquially by locals as simply the Mount, is a small tidal island in Mount's Bay, Cornwall, United Kingdom. Its Cornish language name - literally, "the grey rock in a wood" - may represent a folk memory of a time before Mount's Bay was flooded, indicating a description of the Mount set in woodland. Remains of trees have been seen at low tides following storms on the beach at Perranuthnoe, but radiocarbon dating established the submerging of the hazel wood at about 1700 BC.

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As I walked up the mount, I came across this cute octagonal building, and a palm tree - too cool a combination to pass up and not photograph!

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Probably my favorite image made during this visit, a composition within the chapel using my tilt-shift lens to keep the perspective of the far wall from being distorted, while using a composition that kept so much of the monument on the side wall in the image.

South West England II - Bodmin

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At the end of this day of photography, the photo tour students and I made our way to Bodmin, the central administrative town for the area. After a light dinner, we walked around town, photographing. The evening light coming through the building windows caught my eye almost immediately.

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Most of my time in Bodmin was spent photographing the local church - and the ramshackle graveyard that lay around it - I am not certain if the graves were moved, or building just built right up against them, but either way, it looked great.

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The old wooden doors of the church were a great study in weathering, and subtle colours.

South West England I

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Landing in England

This marked the first day of a two-week long visit to Britain; the first week was spent leading a photo tour of Cornwall, while the second was to be spent photographing gothic cathedrals and abbeys throughout the South-West of Britain.

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This trip marked my first return to the United Kingdom since I was a child (30 years earlier), when I lived in the city of York for a while. Since that time, I have always had a strong draw to the UK, both in terms of the arts (music in particular) and history. The City of York has one of the best gothic cathedrals in Europe, and is the root of much of my affection for photographing architecture.

After the overnight flight to London, I met up with most of the photographers attended the tour, and together we set off in a rental car. With the primary goal of getting out of London, and too our accommodations for the next week, the only significant stop was in Exeter; though the city has a beautiful cathedral, I purposely avoided it, knowing there wouldn't be time to explore it photographically. Instead, we parked downtown, and went to have lunch in a pub, which came complete with a lovely marble statue.

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After dinner, the students and I agreed it would be a good idea to stretch our legs for a bit before resuming our journey west, so we walked around the town for a fifteen minutes or so, cameras in hand, photographing what caught the eye.

A Photo 101 Field Trip

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 There are times when an image is simple enough to need no words.

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One interesting reality of working with infrared digital cameras is that I often find myself photographing things to just see what they look like in infrared - in this case, I loved how the sand looked, and the great reflection of the sky in the water around the poles.

A Field Trip to Fort George

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One of the best things about living in Halifax is Fort George (the Citadel), which is the heart, and centre of the city. I have photographed the fort for over twenty years, but never tire of exploring the vistas and scenes it offers.

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I've made images of the bottom of this stairwell before, but never in colour, and never with a tilt-shift lens (though to be honest, one earlier photo was made with a 4"x5" view camera, which has far more flexibility than the rather simplistic options of a tilt-shift lens). I have to admit, colour adds a lot to this image.

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The final set of images from this field trip were of the mounted RML canons on the city side of the fort. While most of the Halifax Defence Complex is in ruins, with the guns either thrown aside, or missing completely, these guns have been maintained and kept in top shape - one is used every day at noon!

A Waterfront Field Trip

A Sunset Field Trip

Digital infrared original, 2 frame stitch