Framedlight

Here are the monochrome conversions of some of the photographs I took on Rough Tor. I thought the gritty rock suited the black and white treatment, and the intense blue of the sky allowed me to turn it nearly to black using the red filter in Silver Efex, the conversion software I used.

The following morning I woke up just before dawn, but on putting my head out the window realised that the sky was clear and not really worth the effort of getting out of bed, probably because I was rather tired from the day before. I should have done more research on where to go for  sunrise shots, but north west Cornwall does face, sort of west so I thought making the effort at the end of the day was probably better. We did go for a walk on the moor first thing and then set out for Port Quin, which was the closest beach as the fabled crow flies. The tide was in and the beach was being commandeered by a boat that was being tractored off. After it had gone I took a picture of the rather lovely warm coloured rocks and then we drove south to a little place called Pentireglaze, just north of Polzeath. Here we parked in a National Trust car park and walked up the peninsula to Rumps Point, named as there are two round buttocky hills at the top. The sky remained obst...

Following on from my coast path walk with Hettie it was time to consider where to go for sundown. Note, not sundowner ! For some reason, best known to myself, we drove for about an hour up to Crackington Haven, the most northern bit of my 'territory'. I left Hettie in the car to rest while I made for the beach. The rocky foreshore had a number of people on it when I arrived, but they soon left for their suppers and I was alone facing a rapidly incoming tide. As the sun went down I moved up the beach with breached wellingtons, until I finally used a 200mm lens to get closer to the action! A few high whispy clouds appeared with dusk and when it was almost dark I gave up and we returned to our cottage for supper and the continuing story of the 'history of film'

We arrived back at the car after out coastal walk at about 5.30pm. Sunset was going to take place around 6.20 so I went down to the beach at Constantine Bay to find some good spots to take a few photographs. I left Hettie in the car as she was pretty tired after her day out. I walked right across the sand to the northern side of the beach where there were some nice rock formations and started to take pictures as the sun descended. With some of them I used my 'big stopper' to blur the moment of the water. Due to the lack of cloud cover the sunset was not dramatic but I got some nice pastel colours. Leaving the beach around an hour later meant that I got home at about 8.00pm, enough time for a quick bite to eat and a start on the bumper DVD boxed set on the history of film that I had brought with me.

Recently I have had 3 weeks on my own while Alan went on a cycle extravaganza in Mallorca. I thought it would be exciting to spend a week in Cornwall, just myself, the dog and the camera. And so I booked a cottage, not right on the coast but around 15 miles inland near St Breward on the very south fringe of Bodmin Moor. I stayed in a little group of holiday cottages situated on a farm, Hallagenna, where apparently the black horse of Lloyds bank fame had been raised. This backed on to a piece of moorland known as Lady Down Moor. Here I stayed for 6 nights, leaving on the Friday so that I could join Alan in Mallorca for his final week. I was lucky with the weather, too lucky as it turned out as most days there was little cloud cover. Photographers are never happy with the amount of cloud they get! The first morning I was up early and out on the moor to get the sunrise (around 6.40am). I did this most mornings and basically got almost the same pictures as the weather conditions d...