Photography | alan frost photography

Posts tagged ‘Photography’

Dunraven Bay – a brief visit

Dunraven Bay is situated on the south coast of Wales in the Vale of Glamorgan. The bay itself faces west and is also known as Southerndown beach after the nearby village.

I visited this lovely coastline on a cold and windswept afternoon at the end of March. I was fortunate to find the tide was out, revealing the sands and rocks which make this such an interesting place to photograph. With the weather as it was there were only a few people around, just a handful of walkers and their dogs to leave their foot and paw prints in the sand.

I tried to imagine what it would be like mid summer, in warm temperatures and blue skies. The car park would be full, families would be enjoying the lovely beach, children rock pooling and building sand castles. The surf would also attract windsurfers and others who enjoy their water sports. For me though, I enjoyed the isolation, free to wander and explore, and take shots of anything which took me eye. Rarely did I have to wait for people to move out of the frame.

I hope you enjoy the selection of images shown below. To view a larger version click on the image and it will open in a new window.

A return to Bath and an alternative view

Tradesmen only

At the end of October last year I spent a very enjoyable day in the beautiful Georgian city of Bath in Somerset, on a photographic workshop with Andy Beel FRPS. I wrote about it here. More recently I was travelling back from South Wales and had agreed to pick up my daughter in Bath and we would return home together. The weather was very different to my previous visit. It had been raining heavily in the morning and by the time I arrived in Bath the rain had stopped but it was still grey and overcast. This was in complete contrast to the bright sunshine I had experienced towards the end of last year. I had a couple of hours to kill and decided that I would try and adopt an alternative approach to before. The weather conditions offered very different lighting and I thought I would challenge myself by sticking to just one lens – the Olympus 75mm f1.8 on the Olympus EM1. Because of the crop factor this lens equates to a 150mm on a full frame 35mm camera. Ordinarily this is not the lens I would choose to take photographs in a crowded city with large buildings and confined areas in which to work. Reach for the wide angle, others might say; try to get everything into the shot. Although I covered a similar area I was looking for new angles and arguably the less glamorous parts of the city which had been the obvious things to shoot last time round. I finished up with the selection you can see here.

Old steps

Behind the Georgian facade

Porticos

Resting pigeon

Sash window

Back street

Going down

Walking on a Sunday

Street lamp

I took great pleasure from revisiting Bath and taking an alternative view. When I compare this set of images with those I took at the tail end of last year, there are some common features, but I think the overall impression they give of the city is very different. I also enjoyed restricting myself to just one prime lens. It made me look for images which only worked with a more limited and compressed depth of field. If you missed the link to my earlier post on Bath, it’s here. Do click on any of the images to view a larger version which will open in a new window.

Foggy morning on the south coast

Boat by the pier

The weather has been quite glorious for the past week or two, but sometimes at this time of year the coastline can be affected by sea fog. More often that not it burns off but while it lasts it will bring the temperature right down. A few hundred yards inland it can be bright sunshine and much warmer.

The weather forecast predicted early morning fog, so I left for work much earlier than normal, took my camera and walked along the seafront for about half an hour and took the photographs you can see in this entry. I like the emptiness of a seaside resort first thing in the morning and when coupled with the fog it takes on a very different feel. Later in the day the blue skies and warm sunshine had encouraged people to come out and the coastline took on a whole new character.

Painted hut

Cockles and whelks

Empty tables

Gull on a groyne

Boat and huts

Lone walker

All of the images in this post were taken with a Leica M Monochrom and 50mm Summilux lens. Straight out of the camera the images are very flat so they do need processing. I used Lightroom and then applied a Kodak Tri X 400 ‘film type’ preset in Silver Efex Pro which adds some grain and contrast to the image.

Click on any the photographs to view a larger version.

Last light of the day on Cley Windmill

This very fine windmill can be found at Cley Next The Sea, on the North Norfolk Coast. The last light of the day fell on the mill and lit up the white painted sails, the terrace of village houses and the reeds in the foreground. Minutes later the sun had dropped below the horizon and my camera was packed away in its bag, waiting for the light of another day.

The best catch of the day

Mist on the Test

I can’t describe myself as a fisherman, but when a good friend of mine invited me to join him for a day of fly fishing on the River Test in Hampshire the answer was always going to be yes please! I had been fly fishing before, but never caught anything apart from a few weeds and the odd tree branch when my cast was less than accurate.

We wanted to get to our destination quite early as we had booked a gillie for the morning. Hopefully he would teach us a thing a two which might increase our chances of success. As we drove towards the village of Timsbury, which is just to the north of Romsey, the morning mist had yet to clear, so I had already anticipated there might be the chance of a quick photograph before the sun burnt through.

When we arrived no one else was there so we pieced together our rods, attached the reel, chose our flies and prepared ourselves for the first cast. All this time I was admiring the scene that surrounded me. The mist rising from the river, obscuring the view of the fields in the distance. It was calm and serene but I knew it would not last long. The camera came out and ‘Mist on the Test’ was taken.

We saw a fleeting glimpse of a pair of kingfishers, watched grebes diving for their food and swans enjoying the beautiful spring sunshine, but neither of us caught a single fish; in fact we didn’t even get a bite. But it was a glorious relaxing day if a little frustrating at times. I also committed the cardinal sin of not charging my batteries over night, so the low level battery warning was blinking before the day had even begun. Even the spare battery had little or no charge. So I gave up the photography and concentrated on the fishing. Little did I know that the first release of the shutter turned out to be the best catch of the day.

And just to prove we were fishing here is my friend Nik making his first cast of the day.