November 2019
With autumn coming to it’s fiery peak and the chance of fantastic photography weather… dramatic light, misty or even frosty mornings, November is quite possibly my favourite month of the year. It’s also the time of year when I run some of my favourite workshops… here’s a look back at the month.
A long exposure at Durdle Door, Dorset
Dorset
November actually didn’t start very well (and I’m not just referring to England losing the rugby world cup final). It should have began with a feast of autumnal colour on a woodland workshop in Hatfield Forest for the National Trust, but with winds high enough to make the forest a potentially dangerous place to be, that had to be cancelled. The month improved rapidly though, as I headed down to the south coast for a 3 day workshop on the beautiful Dorset Coast.
I love running these workshops, you can cram a lot of photography into three days while still having time to relax, chat about photography and enjoy good food and company. We had a great time photographing the cliffs, coves, ruins and rock stacks that are classic Dorset coast landscapes while managing to (mostly) dodge the rain showers. This was a new workshop, expanding the range outside my home patch of East Anglia and I’m already looking forward to a return here for another workshop in January. I will of course still be running all of my East Anglian workshops as well as adding new locations as soon as I’ve had time to sufficiently recce them... new 2020 dates will be coming soon.
A hint of sunset at Kimmeridge
A dramatic sunrise at Ponta de São Lourenço
Madeira
Just three days after leaving Dorset, I was on my way to Madeira. This was another workshop first, and having sampled Madeira’s photographic delights on recce trips here, one I was very much looking forward to.
If you are unfamiliar with Madeira, it is the largest in an archipelago of rugged volcanic islands, basically the tip of a huge mountain rising from the floor of the Atlantic, and the landscapes are like something imagined by Tolkien. The coast is a beautifully hostile place, with sheer cliffs plunging into seething waters and waves crashing onto black, windswept beaches where rock stacks rise from the sea like huge splinters. Inland there is a tropical feel, lush green forests plunge down into narrow valleys and tiny villages and terraced fields appear to defy gravity as they cling to the sides of the mountains rising into (and hopefully for photographers, above) the clouds.
The climate is just as interesting at this time of year, changing from shorts weather by the coast to hat and gloves in the mountains. To add to the drama, we were treated on the trip to the kind of changeable weather that swings between the most amazing light and rain showers in very little time at all. It can make things challenging - never taking your eyes of your tripod for fear of it blowing over for example, but such dramatic landscapes need suitably stirring weather and I wouldn’t have changed a thing… apart perhaps from having to clean sea spray of my filters every few minutes!
Black Devils Tower at sunrise
Long exposure at Ribeira da Janela
Meanwhile back at home…
Breaking things up between workshops was a job for an upmarket heritage property developer, photographing a mansion conversion in London in the glorious autumnal landscape. It was a tight window between trips but I got lucky with the weather and took full advantage of the one and only day when the sun (and frost) made an appearance. Despite the perfect weather and amazing location, work is still going on and it is very much a building site so it was a challenging task to hide any signs of that.
If you are looking for an apartment on the edge of London (and have deeper pockets than me!), this place is amazing.
Iceland
I had left the week between the Madeira and Iceland trips clear (apart from a couple of camera club talks) to get out with the camera around East Anglia and maybe catch the tail end of autumn, but as it turned out the weather was awful (typically!) so I took the opportunity to clean my gear, try and catch up on some processing and recharge my batteries a bit ahead of what could be a tiring trip to Iceland.
Iceland in early winter really shouldn’t be tiring at all. Apart from the buzz of excitement from just being there, sunrise is around 10.45am and sunset is 3.45pm so with short days, there’s plenty of time to rest. Incidentally, the sun during those short winter days barely rises more than a few degrees above the horizon so the light is to die for. But this is a northern lights workshop so every night after dinner, the layers go back on and we all head out with the cameras again. If we’re lucky and the aurora comes out to play then it’s often the early hours of the morning before we get back to the hotel.
With clear skies and little wind, conditions during the first of the two workshops were perfect for night time photography, but frustratingly there was little aurora activity. We caught some beautiful light along the south coast beaches during the day but were kept waiting until the last night when, by the shores of a deserted glacial lagoon, we were treated to a fantastic display of shimmering norther lights.
For the second workshop we headed west to the Snæfellsnes peninsula where heavy cloud, snow and rain threatened to foil any chance of seeing the northern lights. As it turned out, with a combination of studying weather apps and a bit of luck, we managed to find an area of clear skies over Kirkjufell mountain on the very first night and one of the best northern lights displays I’ve seen.
You’re always at the mercy of the elements at this time of year in Iceland but I’ve never been anywhere where those elements… the weather conditions, the light and the landscape itself, are so inspiring. If you’ve ever been you’ll know what I mean, if you haven’t, you really should.
Kirkjufell
Black church and grey weather, Budir
The last few months have been rather crazy, when I first became a full time landscape photographer I never dreamt that I’d be so busy. If there’s a downside to being so busy it’s the lack of time to keep up with processing and the images from the workshops and shoots start to build up. Looking back at each month in these blogs has given me a push to get (at least some of) the images from these trips processed and an outlet to actually do something with them… I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I have putting them together.