South West England IX - South to London

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This day was a transition period; the week-long photo tour I had lead in Cornwall was now over, and I was driving one of the students back to just south of London. This was the least photographed day of the trip.

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In exchange for the drive, I'd been offered the night's accommodation, so after a long and tiring drive, I spent a lovely English evening sitting outside and enjoying the light. The family dog was also outside...enjoying watching the local rabbits...and the occasional deer.

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Just below the modern deck I was on was an original garden feature, with called out for a composition.

South West England VIII (Lansallos & Fowey, Southern Cornwall

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One of the best parts of traveling in the UK (or much of Europe, for that mater) is the open door policy in churches - see an interesting church, and the chances are, the door is open, and on can wander around, photographing, without an hassle or issue. St Ildierna Church in Lansallos, Cornwall was no exception to this, and provided a great opportunity to work with some architecture, both exterior and interior.

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The interior of the church was unexpectedly beautiful; large slates formed the floor, and the carved pews and ceiling were lovely. I used my tilt-shift lens for the above image, looking down the church but shifting the lens to the right to include more of the pews.

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The final set of images were made back outside of St Ildierna's, using infrared's rendition of the trees, grass and hedge to create a dramatic view from the road towards the church.

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We finished the day's photography in the coastal town of Fowey, where we ate dinner, and then roamed around town for half-an-hour photographing, before heading back to the car, and our accomidations.

South West England VII - Travelling to Port Isaac

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On the start of our woodland walk, just past a Roman Mile-maker(!), I came across a little patch of flowers - I used the widest setting on my compact camera and got as close as I could to one flower, to create the above image.

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St Nectans Glen was one of the most eerie spaces I have every visited - more like a mausoleum or sanctuary than any graveyard  or church  have ever visited. The rocks were covered with small offerings, notes and even photographs...it felt incredibly private and personal.

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After close to an hour walking through lovely woodland, we arrived at St Nectans Glen; a haunting location with a stunning waterfall. I would have been awesome to work with a model in the space, but it was WAY to public to ever be an option (in fact a search of the internet would indicate no-one has EVERY worked with a figure model in the space).

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As we walked back from the waterfall, I made this image of a wild flower. The advantage of having a compact camera is obvious in cases like this - great depth of field in relatively low light, without having to fight with a tripod!

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We arrived at Port Isaac at low tide, but decided NOT to park on the shore, like others were. The little town was lovely, but at the time I was oblivious to its claim to fame - the setting for the TV drama Doc Martin. Having watched the series now, I can see why those who knew the show wished to visit the town!

South West England VI - Wells Cathedral

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On the drive into Wells, I paused to fill the car with petrol, and saw this lovely scene, with the two lines of chimneys and a church tower. Fortunately, as always, a camera was at hand, and without much delay, I was able to make the above composition.

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Wells Cathedral was the first of the dozen or so Cathedrals and Abbeys I planned to photograph during this trip. Making images of the ceiling of the chapter house felt like a dream - and this was only the first of many in the coming week and a half!

Completed by 1306, the Chapter Hpise is where the church canons met daily to discuss business. The original stained glass windows were smashed by Cromwell’s soldiers during the English Civil War (1642-61). The roof, known as a tierceron vault, has 32 ribs (called tiercerons) springing from the central shaft. While not quite a fan vault, it was one of the important architectural steps towards developing the fan vault.

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The cloister at Well was quite restrained, compared to the ornate ceilings in later constructions; I actually find the stark lines of the ceiling vaulting quite delicate, giving a feeling of a spiderweb, as much as a hall of stone and glass.

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My visual expectations of Wells Cathedral were mostly based upon the work of Frederick Evans, who's work I have loved for more than two decades. The scissor arches under the tower are so iconic that rather than focus on them (as most photographers seem to do), I decided to show them in the context of the nave.

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On the drive back to our accommodation, we passed through some lovely rolling countryside, and with the early evening sun casting long shadows, it was a perfect subject for infrared!

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.

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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.