As the rest of the UK received a large dumping of snow, the Isle of Wight instead had high winds and squally rain showers. This is an image of the Needles on the west cost of the Isle of Wight. Walking up from the car park, the winds were in excess of 60 knots, which translates to mid force 11 winds, a few knots shy of hurricane wind speeds!
gale
Shot for the Day (22 August 2016)
Last weekend, the UK was battered with gale force winds and heavy rain. I headed down to Sidmouth in Devon to try and capture some of nature’s drama. The first shot was from a rock jetty by the sea. I used a Little Stopper, which caused an interesting colour cast in the image. The sea was a deep red from the churned up sea bed.
I move along the beach to grab this shot of the waves breaking against the concrete causeway. The evening sun was behind me but the clouds to the east reflected the evening glow, behind the crashing waves.
A day in Death Valley, USA
Recently, after being on a film shoot in California, I had a couple of days spare at the end of my trip and decided to capture some images in Death Valley. I made the classic tourist error of hiring a convertible car, which in the desert, is a bad idea. You want, no, you need to have air conditioning. Being stoic, I chose discomfort and sunburn instead, which turned out well for me.
Anyhow, here are a few shots I took in a day long photography shoot in Death Valley. It effectively documents the arrival of a fierce thunder-storm, gale force winds and a torrential downpour that flooded the roads in multiple places.
The fluffy white clouds formed the perfect backdrop to this ghost town
Thick, heavy cloud was blowing into Death Valley from Nevada to the east.
The sky seemed to lose colour as the heavy, grey clouds gathered overheat, blocking out the intense sun and dropping the temperature some 20 degrees Celsius.
Rain began to fall and there were two separate rainbows in the desert. It was magnificent.
For these last two images, the wind was blowing a gale and I had to cling on to my camera gear to fear that it would be snatched away by the wind.
Forks of lightening spread 180 degrees sideways through the sky as I drove back to my hotel after taking the final session of shots on Zabriskie Point.
All Terrain Photography 