An early morning slow sunrise over the channel in east Devon. There was very little movement in the water and yet the clouds moved at a quickened pace above me.
This shots was taken about 30 minutes after dawn had broken, just as the sun finally cleared the bank of cloud hugging the horizon.
Back in 2011, I was on assignment for Lonely Planet in South America, gathering some new shots for their online library. This was taken in the middle of nowhere in southern Bolivia, less than 100 miles form the Chilean and Argentinian borders, close to the Salar de Uyuni. It was late afternoon and the heat of the day in the altiplano desert was rapidly evapourating as the steely grip of night gathered traction.
Temperatures regularly drop to -20 degrees Celsius. That night was no exception.
On a walk along Exmouth beach, the light was not particularly interesting, so I decided to play with my Lee Big Stopper, so blur the waves behind the lifebuoy. The colour cast of the filter and the strong red of the lifebuoy made up for the flat skies.
Nature is often endowed with beautiful patterns that can only be witnessed from certain angles, making them all the more delightful you finally see them. A river running through a forest in Berkshire created a scare line in the dense, evergreen forest. The view is more akin to Scandinavia than Berkshire. I can almost smell the pine trees.
Sometimes, squaring off against the elements for the shot can be worth the wait.
I sat on Exmouth beach as a storm front rolled in over the English Channel. The orange afternoon hues were soon extinguished by the choking, omnipresent clouds. Day was transformed to night as the wind suddenly picked up. Moments later, the heavens opened and I realised how exposed I was, sat alone on the stretch of sand.
A perfect afternoon as I recall.
Still getting used to mixing light levels between graduate ND filters and a Big Stopper. This was a 2 minute exposure on the Devonshire coastline, as the afterglow of the sunset dwindled just long enough to be captured on film. To the naked eye, the scene was almost devoid of colour, verging on the black and white.
Recently, after many failed attempts, I was fortunate enough to go on a balloon flight over Berkshire. The evening weather as perfect as the breeze pushed us eastwards, towards Henley. On the way, we flew over a verdant forest, where a horse and rider momentarily materialised from between the trees as they crossed the bisecting path beneath us.
Hard to imagine that you are only 25 miles from London at moments like this.
Following on from my last shot of the day on August 10th, this shot was take a few hours earlier at Ayrmer Cove, just as the sun was setting behind the peninsula. The magic of the moment was having this entire beautiful scene to myself, something that rarely happens at sunset.
I had originally intended to photograph one of my favourite beaches in southern Devon but it was the wrong time of year for the sunset across the opening of the cove. Instead, I retraced my steps by a few miles to Ayrmer Cove and waited until around half an hour after the sun dropped below the horizon, to capture this long exposure shot.
All Terrain Photography 