In the bleak midwinter

We had dinner in Walberswick on Wednesday evening but missed out on seeing much beyond the pub as it was so dark. To learn what we’d missed out on we stopped there again on the way home the next day.

The fog of the previous evening hadn’t completely lifted, leaving a soft covering of moisture in the air. Combined with the heavy skies, the result was a very bleak view of the harbour - almost monochrome even when photographed in colour! I decided to go black and white for my photos to emphasise their dank quality.

Photos taken 22 December 2022

Sunset at Southwold

We enjoyed a short pre-Christmas break in Suffolk last week and the lure of the beautiful sunset colours over Southwold were too good to resist.

Playing with slower shutter speeds and the waves breaking on the shore.

Photos taken 21 December 2022

Welsh meanderings

After my music course in Wales last month finished I took a very enjoyable meander down the hill to the Cynghordy Viaduct and beyond - some much needed fresh air and exercise after several days of intense music making.

One of our course students was on this train as it chugged across the Cynghordy Viaduct!

I had no preconceived ideas as to what I might photograph along the way and came back with a pretty varied selection.

Just beyond the viaduct is a goat farm and some of the local residents came out to greet me!

A closer view of the viaduct

The view across the valley never fails to surprise and delight me - this is a photo I snatched from my bedroom window on the first morning I was there - a wonderfully misty autumn morning and even a train on the viaduct.

And finally, a couple of my canine friends from my final morning in Wales. On the left we have Barney, who belongs to one of our students, and Jasper, the resident cockerpoo, on the right.

Photos taken October 2022

Decay in colour

I thought I’d follow yesterday’s post with the digital photos I took during my visit to the boat graveyard at Pin Mill. A very different look - so colourful and crisp but you can’t deny there’s still a beauty in decay!

Click on any image to see it larger.

Photos taken on 24 March 2022

Where boats go to die....

Pin Mill is a popular location for East Anglian photographers. It’s home to a boat graveyard - a spot along the edge of the River Orwell where lots of wooden vessels have been left to quietly rot away. Decay is almost always photogenic and this spot had long been on my must visit list.

Through the wonders of social media I’ve got to know lots of other pinhole photographers so on this occasion I met up with Andrew Keedle, who lives not far from Pin Mill in Suffolk. We spent a most enjoyable morning exploring the wrecks together, figuring out what would suit this slow medium best.

With an ultra wide focal length, it pays to get really close to your subject with pinhole cameras and I played with just how close I could get to some of the boats without sinking into the mud!

After a spot of lunch Andrew took me to one of his favourite locations, the Orwell Country Park which runs alongside the river. Here I crept beneath the canopy to capture a vertiginous view of the trees above, as well as photographing an amazing ancient oak tree.

Photos taken on 24 March 2022.

A different view

In my last post I shared some digital images from my birthday wander along the beach at West Wittering. While I was there I also spent some time taking pinhole photos to bring out some of the movement in the waves. Pinhole photography is so good at this - you can capture whole chunks of time in a longer exposure.

The following morning I drove down to Aldwick, arriving just in time for low tide. I wanted to photography the chunk of the D-Day Mulberry Harbour which lies on the beach but the only time you can get close is when the sea is out. This enormous chunk of concrete escaped en-route to Normandy back in 1944 and has sat here ever since.

On this particular occasion the tide wasn’t especially low and the blustery wind was whipping up the waves. Sometimes you can walk right around it, but this time I had to keep a sensible distance so as not to get swamped!

With a couple of frames left on my film I used them to catch a couple of other watery scenes before retreating to my car to avoid getting soaked by the incoming rainstorm!

Photos taken 9 & 10 March 2022

Birthday meanderings

Back in March I happened to be travelling to Sussex on my birthday, ready for a music course the next day. I never pass up the opportunity to visit the seaside so I decided to take a birthday stroll along the beach at West Wittering.

While I was there I spent some time taking pinhole photos, which I’ll share in a separate post, but I fancied some instant gratification too, for which my little Fuji X100 was perfect!

Photos taken on 9 March 2022

Revisiting Northern Ireland

Hot on the heels of my pinhole photos from our Northern Ireland holiday, I’m back with my digital images. I travelled light for this trip, taking just my little Fuji X100V, which has a fixed 23mm lens. Some people might find this limiting but I’ve known for a long while that I ‘see’ best with a prime lens - it just makes me work harder to seek out compositions.

My photographic explorations began before we’d even left England, taking a few photos from my seat on our aeroplane, including a view of Hatfield Forest as we took to the skies.

Our first view of Northern Ireland - so green!

When we arrived we went for a jaunt around Castlerock, the village where we were staying and after a rainy start the sun came out!

The next morning we explored Portstewart, where we found some great street art, including a small painting which may or not be a Banksy…

A duo of digital images from the Mussenden Temple to complement the pinhole photos I took there. It’s amazing to think that once upon a time you could drive a horse and carriage right round this building!

Looking across the harbour at Port Rush

My main photographic focus at the Giant’s Causeway was my pinhole images, but I did take a few digital photos on our walk from the visitors’ centre.

Towards the end of our holiday we visited Derry City but chose to take the train rather than driving. The views across the river estuary were glorious so I took some minimalist photos of the landscape as it whizzed past the train window.

One of Derry’s most striking landmarks is the Peace Bridge, crossing the River Foyle which runs through the centre of the city. I love its curvaceous lines - so photogenic.

The Peace Bridge, crossing the River Foyle in Derry

While the lines of the Peace Bridge seemed to call for a monochrome treatment the rest of Derry was too vivid for me to remove the colour!

On our last day we took a diversion to the Titanic museum in Belfast. Such a wonderful structure and it was astonishing to see SS Nomadic, a tender which ferried some of the passengers to the Titanic when it moored just outside Cherbourg Harbour.

Photos taken in June 2022