Up early for sunrise over the Marshwood Vale on the south western edge of Dorset to witness the rising mist over the surrounding levels. The first day of September and it true feels as though summer has been and gone…

A mildly abstract one for today, make of it what you will…

I headed down to Kimmeridge the other day in the hopes of a great sunset with the low tide. Upon arrival the tide was certainly low, as low as any of the locals I met could ever remember unfortunately large grey clouds rolled in and all but obscured the sunlight. So much for a wonderful sunset, the rest of the day had been bright with just the right amount of clouds and had the potential to build into a spectacular display. Alas not, I tried a few compositions but settled with a gentle reflection of the last bit of light on the wet rock slabs…maybe next time…

A few weekends ago I met up with a few other brave souls on one very windy morning and ventured out to Durdle Door, the destination for many school geography day trips and tourists alike thanks to the unique geology and resulting shapes carved out of the rocks over thousands of years. If you perform a search you’ll find thousands of shots from this popular location so it is a bit of a challenge to avoid the cliches and come up with something a bit different…Personally I found it’s the bay the other side of the spit of land from ‘the door’ is on that’s much more interesting. A semi-circular cove protected by a bank of sharp rocks some 100m out, at the time huge waves were crashing over the tops of their dark peaks creating a big swell in the bay. Each wash up the shore was followed by long fingers as the surf was dragged back down the beach again, rather mesmeric if you watched it for too long! We stayed until the sun was too high and contrasty – and all our filters had become completely gummed up with salt spray and smears – I broke off from shooting the crashing waves and headed off for lunch with everyone. Later on we braved the waves yet again down at Portland Bill where I had been before, and how different it was. Being some way off the mainland the seas carried much more power in their waves, as deep waves slammed into the straight sided slabs of Portland Bill huge plumes of spray doused the entire headland in a fine – and sometimes heavy! – spray. One miscalculated wave almost soaked all my gear but thankfully it was still safe in the bag…though it filled my wellies somewhat!

Lessons learned this time: take a good cleaning cloth with you into the field and don’t underestimate the size of the wave approaching…

 

I nipped down to the Dorset coast to see what’s what at Lyme Regis. The light was superb, the movement of the water was brilliant for what I wanted, the clouds were all lining up ready for the final bit of colour in the day…but the wind was unbelievably strong. The camera almost toppled over on the tripod a few times, between me frantically trying to wipe off the salt water from my filters – which incidentally I failed spectacularly at, succeeding in only smearing the salty residue round the filter to make a misty view – and trying to sort out a cable release that, well, kept releasing itself from the connection port… very helpful.

I tried a few into the sun, as it really was something spectacular but that was also where the spray was coming from so despite my best efforts, waiting for the right moment and so on, there was just too much spray. It was just in the air all around me, everything got a fine coating of salt. It reminded me of the sort of salt covering you might find on a cross-channel ferry where the decks glisten and the handrails seem sticky with the stuff, it builds up and seems never to dry. You couldn’t see it, or feel it (unless a big wave hit = soaking!) but my filter was steadily getting spattered by salty droplets and I noticed a fine build-up accumulating around the joins of my tripod. I gave up on the filter, I turned my back to the spray and sun and what you see is above ‘vanilla’, just the processed raw, smidge of burning in places but no filters. Included below show everything I didn’t bin. So, not an entire disaster but not the sort of conditions I was expecting!