Looking at and photographing Brynmill Park on my walk this week was a most interesting challenge. While my walk had started in sunlight, by the time the walking forum meeting I was there to attend finished, the light was fading fast and making for an increasingly dark park.
So none of these images are under-exposed – it was dark, but not so much so that my surroundings could not be seen. The complexity of form was flattened as the intricacy ofContinue reading
I photographed Oxwich beach at the start of my walk this week. The shape may be a little less obvious in the shot below but it still reveals a bottleneck form. If from this angle the shape is a bottleneck, then the third image in the sequence below could only be described as a wedge. The shape seemed obvious to me and is the reason for taking the photo but I wanted to emphasise it more and experimented with the contrast in monochrome.
Having enjoyed the overexposed beach image I posted from the previous Taste of Gower walk at Llanmadoc, I increased the exposure on the last photo below as well. With almost no reference points in the image, what is real becomes abstract.
Beach Bottleneck
Exposed as I was to the weather on my walk at Southgate, I again used less exposure in these shots of the cliffs at Three Cliffs Bay on South Gower than was technically correct. However, as on previous occasions, this was deliberate and the result is definitely more realistic in terms of how it felt than if I had used the correct exposure. The result is quite Gothic in atmosphere.
The second shot is monochrome and can be seen on Leanne Cole’s Photography blog post Monochrome Madness MM 2-34.
I don’t know if photographic exposure is a thorny issue for anyone but speaking more literally, the subject of this first image is definitely thorny!
These images may seem under exposed but if they are slightly dark, that is because it was a very dark day for our Taste of Gower walk at Southgate on the Gower Peninsula. Personally I would describe the walk as exhilarating but I accept that it would not suit everyone. There was still colour to be seen on such a dark day – the Whin (or Gorse if you prefer) and the fungi to be found in the grass was a welcome break to the slate grey of the clouds and sea.
The bright sunlight on Rhosilli beach seemed to bleach the sand. Originally I darkened these photos as I thought they were over exposed, but although they were made clearer by doing so, they also became less representative of the glare on this part of the beach.
Sunlight has different qualities according to the current atmospheric conditions. I cannot tell you in scientific or meteorological terms what was going on in the atmosphere on this day but I can try to present something of the quality of light that at times was almost blinding
The dawn walk I have been posting about this week took me through woods I have often posted about on this blog. Unlike yesterday’s underexposed images this first photo is much more like the reality of the place. The second, however, is again underexposed – the effect of the morning sunlight and shade of the trees on the footpath highlighted the forms and patterns of the leaves and the warmth of colour from the just risen sun produced a real sense of the place at that time.
I don’t think this can be described as an event horizon, but it is definitely an event taking place on the horizon! Of course the actual light in the sky at this point (as in the previous post) is greater than is shown here but the photographs being somewhat underexposed represent more accurately the sense of drama, the emotion of the event as it happens in real life.
The horizon is that of Cefn Drum, one side of Cwmdulais, the small river valley just to the east and a tributary of the river Loughor. Cefn Drum and its neighbour Graig Fawr are two more walks I would count among my favourites in this area.
The patterns in the water flowing down the steel monolith structure in Cardiff Bay look like they could be parts of an abstract jigsaw. The slow exposure shot below was not an easy one to get as I didn’t have a tripod with me. I did my best though and like the combination of textures and the patterns that show up as a result of the (apparently) faster flowing water.
