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June 2008
Some people are naturally drawn to photographing barns and sheds. Whilst they can be quite photogenic, they don’t really rock my boat. Instead, I am having
a love affair with the lighthouse. Their beacons seem to call out to me, but instead of warning me of dangers, they call me in and tempt me closer. Perhaps
it’s what they symbolise – the fact that they are strong and powerful protectors. Or maybe it’s the rugged landscape that they are generally located in. But
there is something undeniably attractive about lighthouses, particularly at the edges of the day, at dawn and dusk, when they look their most stunning with the
light shining from their beacon standing out bright against the semi-light of the surrounding landscape. At exactly the times of day that landscape photographers
like to be photographing.
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Strumble Head lighthouse. |
When I started planning my trip to the Pembrokeshire coast in the south-west of Wales, one of my top locations to visit was Strumble Head. On the map, this
location looked perfect. The coast here faces north, so the sun would be setting out to sea behind the lighthouse at this time of year. And I hoped that there
would be a profusion of the famous thrift to complement the scene in the foreground.
On my first evening in the area, the light looked very promising so I decided to visit this much anticipated lighthouse. It was reasonably cloudy, but there
were enough breaks to enable the setting sun to shine through the gaps. Although a bank of cloud at the horizon would block the sun lower down in the sky, the
golden hues of early evening could still be captured. I reckoned that I still had a couple of hours before the sun would fall behind the bank of cloud, and
there was always the chance that by then it might have broken up or moved away anyway. So as I parked my car in the small lay-by beside the lighthouse, I could
feel the excitement building.
There’s always an instinct, when you see light so beautiful, to quickly get out your camera and start shooting straight away. But I knew that there was no real
hurry, so decided to take a walk around the lighthouse and get a feel for the place, and think about my composition. To one side of the lighthouse was a bay
surrounded by dark cliffs. Wild flowers were blooming on the cliff tops and it was an enchanting scene. But one side of the bay was in dark shadow that the
camera wouldn’t have been able to record, and neutral density graduate filters would have been tricky to use. So I walked round to the other side of the
lighthouse to see if anything else would present itself to me and instantly knew that here was my image. The lighthouse was standing out on the top of the
rugged cliff with the zigzag of the rocks in middle distance leading back to the lighthouse. But I really wanted some of the beautiful pink flowers of the
thrift to be adorning the foreground too. There were several small groups of the flowers growing on the grass in the foreground, but it was nearing mid-June
and a lot of them were already past their best. I must have spent about an hour searching for the perfect bunch, which were pink enough and also positioned in
such a way to be prominent in the foreground and back-lit with the setting sun.
I knew before I even pressed the shutter that I would be happy with the images. Barring any technical mistakes, but I had run through and double-checked
everything in my mind to be sufficiently sure that the exposure would be fine. Just standing at the scene, hypnotised by the four flash pattern of the
lighthouse’s light, I was sure that these images would be keepers and my love affair with the lighthouse was still alive and strong.
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