landscape – Page 2 – Tales from Wild Wales

Immaculate birds, constant activity and plenty of noise!

I might be a raptor nut but I love terns too. Wales is a bit of a “tern desert” and with one exception (little terns near Prestatyn) one must visit Anglesey to connect with them. Cemlyn Bay on the north coast is the Welsh tern H.Q. with its large sandwich tern colony, alongside smaller numbers of arctics and commons. On a good day one might see a roseate as well. I can confidently say that a visit to Cemlyn is one of the finest wildlife experiences in Wales. But your timing needs to be carefully judged.

The ideal time is just after the tern chicks have fledged because their parents then guide them to the shingle spit which divides the lagoon from the sea, away from the chaos of the nesting islands. But leave it too late and the whole damn lot of them will have left altogether! Last year I arrived on July 23rd to find that most had already gone, whereas in 2020, August 1st was just perfect.

This year I discovered that the North Wales Wildlife Trust helpfully posts updates on the progress of the colony on its website. It suggested that a visit sooner rather than later would be advisable. So I headed north late on July 12th. The following morning I was there bright and early for the full tern colony experience. Immaculate birds, constant activity, and plenty of noise! Despite nearly 50 years of birding experience I have never totally got to grips with the differences between arctic and common terns. Many birders refer to them as “comics” because they are so difficult to separate. However after this visit I think I’m getting there! Sandwich terns are comparatively easy, and I have so rarely come across roseates that identifying one would be a real adventure (but see this post…..).

*_{^{Roseate tern (r.) with three sandwich terns. Note its long black bill and long-ish red legs..}}*

As it happened I picked up my first roseate quite quickly. It was visible on and off on the near edge of the main nesting island during the morning, and around lunchtime there were two together. I was able to get a few (rather poor) photographs of them. One of the tern wardens arrived soon afterwards and I was able to point them out to him. How about that for confidence! But as he had been seeing them throughout the breeding season he wasn’t too excited. He told me that one pair had attempted to breed early on but had failed, while he was still hoping that another pair would soon appear from the denser vegetation on the island with a youngster.*

For some time prior to that I was in “spray and pray” (or point and hope) mode. In other words: point your camera at a bird in flight, press the shutter button and try to follow it. This seems to me to be rather a technical task more dependent on luck than anything else, and I find it rather unsatisfying.

What I found more challenging was to place the terns within the landscape to give them some kind of context. At low tide, during the middle of the day, many roosted on the beach or on rocky outcrops along the foreshore. One could thus place them within an unspoiled landscape, suggesting that all is well with the world, which is perfectly valid. Alternatively, shooting from a different angle, one could set them against the massive hulk of Wylfa nuclear power station , now disused, only a couple of miles away. The viewer can then make up their own mind about the state of the world.

As I mentioned this was during the middle of the day when the sun was at its highest. This is never a good time to take photographs of anything in summer so one does one’s best to compensate for it at the processing stage. Some of the newer features in Lightroom are excellent for this – in particular the ease with which “objects” can be selected and processed individually without affecting the rest of the image. And “denoise” is excellent, although rather slow on my PC.

Another thing I noticed very clearly was how the apparent colour of the power station changed during the course of the day. Its colour scheme at breakfast time matches the colour of the lichen covered rocks on the foreshore very well, and it would be uncanny if this had not been part of its design. I included a photograph illustrating this in my book “Wales at Waters Edge”; I wonder if anyone noticed….? But by early afternoon the plant was naturally bathed in blue light and looked quite different. To put it more technically, the colour of sunlight is towards the blue end of the colour spectrum (“cooler”) during the middle of the day, while it is “warmer” earlier and later. This is well known among photographers but I have never known it being demonstrated so clearly as it was that day.

Arriving as early as July 13th was, in the event, quite a close shave. A note on Facebook from the tern wardens on the 18th said that most of the terns (95% of them) had already left the area. I wish them good luck on their travels and hope they make it back to Cemlyn next year.

*N.B. : The second pair also failed …..

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Compliments.

It is always nice to receive a compliment and this is one of the nicest I’ve ever had:

I am very grateful for the photograph, which arrived safely today. I think it’s really fantastic ……,. showing clearly the bungalow, Uwch y cwm, (of) which we as a family have fond memories. I am going to get it framed. Diolch yn fawr iawn, Tec .

The image concerned (above) dates back to the 2000’s and was used on the front cover of my book Blaenau Ffestiniog. The original was on a transparency, and although I do have a good quality scanner, it had developed a fault. The sale of a single print didn’t actually cover the cost of the repair but the knowledge that the buyer was happy more than makes up for it! And of course I’ve now got a scanner that works.

Satisfying in a different way was the recent sale of ten ‘works’ from my Bird/land exhibition (click to view) to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. The Library has been buying my work intermittently for nearly thirty years and now has well over 300 of my prints in its collection. It was interesting to look my name up in their catalogue and discover how many bits and bobs relating to my life as a photographer are stored away in their vaults. It is an honour and a compliment that the library chose to collect my work and continues to do so. It is also satisfying to know that some of it will outlive me.

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In the footsteps of Fay Godwin.

For many years I have been inspired by the work of the photographer Fay Godwin, who died in 2005 (see this post in particular). This is not the place to fully discuss her life or work. But to summarise the trajectory of her career she was a self-taught photographer who progressed from portraits of authors through traditional landscapes to documentary work out in the landscape, in which environmental issues were prominent. She worked in black-and-white throughout until her last years when she made abstract colour still lives in the studio.

Perhaps “inspired” is the wrong word. Without the advantages she had had (her husband worked in publishing……*) I feel that I have been ploughing the same furrow as she did. The sequence of photographs in my first book – “Wales – The Lie of the Land” (published in 1996) – moved from the “unspoilt” uplands through the industrialised lowlands to the “unspoilt” coastline. Hell, it even included a photograph of Snowdon with someone’s clothes line (complete with washing) in the foreground! No, over the years I suppose I have often felt comforted to know that my vision was shared with her. But I never copied her work.

Until now. I was intrigued by one of her most iconic images, “Marker stone, Harlech to London road”, which first appeared in the book The Drovers’ Roads of Wales (1977) by Godwin and the author Shirley Toulson. It is brilliantly seen and geometrically composed, perhaps more exactly than most of her images. The wall on the hillside in the background is exactly parallel to the angle of the stone and the two are linked by another wall almost at ninety degrees to both. But the exact location was not mentioned and I wondered if Godwin had taken the photograph but couldn’t remember exactly where it had been. I decided I would track the location down and replicate the image.

The route of the old Harlech to London drovers’ road is mapped in Toulson/Godwin and I wrongly assumed that the stone would be marked on the current 1:25000 Ordnance Survey map. At the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments in Aberystwyth I was told that marker stones were commonplace, not necessarily ancient, and as a rule not catalogued. I studied the ancient road’s route on an old OS map online in their library. Marker stones were plotted at regular intervals and by carefully relating one of them to a gate in a wall (visible in the Godwin image) and the wall up the hillside in the background I came up with the prime suspect.

It was an exciting walk up from the roadhead towards the uplands. The closer I got the more confident I became that my guess was correct. The drovers’ road is what would now be described as a “green lane” and was suffering the same fate as many others – offroad bikers churning up the grassy surface into a rutted mess. Then I began to lose faith; none of the other marker stones were visible, and the far “vertical” wall seemed to be pivoting around to the wrong angle. But I needn’t have worried.

I was just getting acclimatised to the place when I heard the (unfortunately) familiar sound of scramble bikes heading towards me. My heart sank but I quickly realised it would be an opportunity to add value to the image I was visualising. I took a series as they headed past the stone towards the gap in the wall. I then got down to the task in hand – finding the exact location where Godwin had stood, sat or kneeled to make her image.

It proved to be impossible. The stone was smaller than it appeared from her photograph and it looked as if it might have sunk or toppled slightly over the last 48 years. The left/right wall was invisible unless I stood up, in which case the tip of the stone was well below its position in the original. I also came to the conclusion that since 1976 grazing pressure on the grassland had become less intense, allowing the turf to spring up and hide the wall and most of the gateway.

An obvious new route has been created to the left of the stone by offroad bikers. On the far hillside, parallel to the wall, a network of illegal scramble bike tracks can be seen; in fact the two offroaders that passed me carried on and added to them – up to the ridge……turn around……slither down again….. The final difference between the two images being a substantial flat rock lying to the right of the marker stone which is missing in the 2024 images.

So would Fay Godwin have approved of my pilgrimage? Quite possibly not. Would she have approved of the new image complete with bikers? I’d like to think so, particularly later in her life.

*Chief editor at Penguin Books and later Managing Director of Weidenfield and Nicholson. It all helps……

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The Isle of Dogs.

Last weekend Jane and I had a couple of days in London. From our room near Greenwich it was just a couple of minutes walk to the Thames Path which more or less follows the riverbank. All very ordinary really. But across the water rose the massive tower blocks of Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs. It was about as far removed from Wild Wales as you can imagine. For a country bumpkin like myself these monsters reaching for the sky were impossible to ignore. The architecture of Canary Wharf is extraordinary from a distance. However I also spent a couple of hours amongst the tower blocks and I don’t think I have ever experienced a landscape so de-humanising. No soul at all. And no dogs.

I just had my little Olympus OM5 with me and a standard zoom, so photography-wise the trip was somewhat limited. Nevertheless I’m pleased with what I achieved, so enjoy the pictures!

*_{Emerging from Greenwich village onto the riverbank I was knocked out by this panorama}*

_{I love the cool blue tones of this pre-sunrise image, which contrast so strongly with the yellow lights on the pier footway.}

*_{Virtually every vestige of the industrial Thames around here has been removed, so this jetty is a rare reminder of the not-too-distant past.}*

Not what you might think. This is one of a series of artworks on the Greenwich peninsula. The artist Richard Wilson bought the sand-dredger “Arco Trent” and installed a slice of it on a sandbank in the Thames.

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The Llanberis lone tree

I was vaguely aware that it existed, and I think I may have visited the area many moons ago. But I’d never taken any photographs of it. I had no idea that there were countless zillions of photos on the internet of the Llanberis lonely tree. It even has its own Facebook page (well sort of…..). So last week I decided it was time I put this situation to rights.

Sunday it had rained all day but the forecast was for a clearance overnight with sunshine throughout the following day. It sounded perfect! I had a pretty good idea where the tree was so the plan was to arrive about 10pm, shortly afterwards falling into a deep and restful sleep in my van, and waking gently just before dawn. What I hadn’t allowed for was the fact that a Netflix movie was being filmed there, and barriers were up everywhere. The nearby car parking had also been “improved” with a long list of restrictions, including “no overnight parking”. This is now typical at honeypot locations throughout Wales and probably elsewhere, but I wondered how many parking attendants would be active between 10 pm and 6am. I had a good chat with a very helpful security guard from the location company who reassured me that my presence nearby would be tolerated.

The next morning I did wake fully rested and brewed myself a quick paned*. I found the tree quickly enough although to get there I had to sidestep one security barrier. Everything was set up perfectly. It was flat calm, the sun was just about to rise and there was enough cloud in the sky to make it interesting. About 6.45 the clouds reddened up. Oh joy! I started with a portrait format image and then began a series of landscapes. The reflections were perfect. And then the first security guard noticed me. She came over and asked me how I had got there. Perhaps I had arrived by helicopter? “Well,” I told her, “I walked.” It had been dark and I couldn’t really remember in any detail. I eventually explained that I had walked round a security barrier. It all ended amicably enough, with me reassuring her that I would soon be finished and would then leave. Two more security guards arrived in the next few minutes. All three seemed to surprised to see me there. One was rather officious, telling me he would have to contact his superiors. We both knew it was all bluff. But shortly after 7 am, it was “mission accomplished”. It had given me extra satisfaction to know that I had outwitted “security”, but if they really wanted to exclude visitors they would really have to try harder! I packed up and left.

When I arrived home a few days later I was very pleased with the results, especially the earliest images with the pink clouds. Very soon this gorgeous colouration had disappeared and the later images look better in monochrome. Photography can often be about moments and this moment had lasted about fifteen minutes.

This was the first stop on a whistle stop tour of north Wales and I may write more later.

* Welsh for “Cuppa”……..

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Once you’ve seen it…….

……… it’s difficult not see it.

I don’t know how many times I had walked to St Davids Head along the undulating coastal path without seeing Coetan Arthur, the neolithic burial chamber. I had walked around it, possibly crawled under it and definitely photographed it in close up but never noticed how clearly it was visible from some distance away. Then one day I must have seen it and now I cannot walk along that section of the path without seeing it. It draws the eye. I don’t believe this a coincidence either; the coastal path presumably follows an ancient route to the promontory fort on the headland itself. The burial chamber must have been sited so prominently for good reason.

I realised on one visit that the burial chamber would be an excellent foreground against which to photograph the sunset – even if it was but a small feature in a big landscape. So, weather permitting, I have now walked there late in the evening several times to see what the sunset would bring. A few days ago I was in St Davids, exhausted after a day on the road visiting my postcard customers. The weather hadn’t been great but I could see a hint of something interesting in the sky as the evening drew on. I grabbed my camera bag and set off.

It turned out be a rather wonderful sunset. After the sun disappeared behind the headland all sorts of oranges and reds appeared in the clouds above it. The burial chamber was silhouetted nicely against this stunning backdrop. So, for a photographer who doesn’t really “do” sunsets, I seemed to have struck lucky again.

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Is that really a thing? (…..or a stunning sunset over Cardigan Bay…..)

*Panoramic image (two frames combined) taken eight minutes after the top one.* *(click to enlarge)*

Last Monday I had to visit my postcard printers in Porthmadog, north Wales, and decided to make it an overnight trip. Leaving home on Sunday afternoon my journey felt rather aimless. The weather had been cloudy and drab for an extended period and there was no guarantee that it would be any better while I was away. I eventually ended up at Fairbourne , right at the mouth of the Mawddach estuary on the southern side – somewhere I very rarely visit. But as the evening slowly drew on I noticed a thinning of the cloud blanket in the west. I decided to go for a walk on the beach.

The sky was beginning to look positively very interesting with broken cloud of various types at different levels. The tide was low and a network of pleasingly shaped pools had formed in the hard sand of the beach. I actually ran back to the van to get my camera bag! Unheard of! I rarely take photos at sunset because the results can be rather predictable, but this, I felt, was an exceptional opportunity.

A few months ago I had bought a very specialised filter specifically for use at times like this. Looking towards the setting sun the light is brightest just above the horizon and gradually fades away towards darkness overhead. The reverse neutral density graduated filter is designed to counter the complex exposure changes that occur in such a situation. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever use it but there it was just sitting in my bag!

Over a period of about twenty minutes I took a series of images of one of the best sunsets I can remember ever seeing ; a complex cloudscape lit up in shades of yellow, orange and finally crimson – all reflected in the sweeping shapes of the pools on the strand. The hilltops and summits of the Pen Llyn extended across the horizon from left to right. Fairbourne itself is not a place of great beauty (or any beauty come to that) but in the right conditions the coastline there can be magical.

To be honest these were not difficult photographs to take. It was more or less a case of “1/125th of a second at f8 and be there”. I posted a couple of the results on an online photo forum and mentioned the use of the filter. One guy replied with the comment “Is that really a thing?” Well, yes, it definitely is a thing, and it works!

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The advantages of insomnia.

Well, I can only think of one. Sometimes a visit to the loo before sunrise on a summer’s morning can present the photographer with scenes like this. The photograph was taken less than five minutes from my front door. Valley fog was slowly “flowing” down to the coast from the uplands; thanks to my inability to sleep I was able to get outside and take a few photographs. The sun had not yet risen above the Cambrian Mountains to the east so the light was soft and gentle.

While processing the image I found this lack of contrast frustrating at first. Adding the contrast it needed led to an unreal looking result. But that little light-bulb in my head said “think black-and-white instead” so I made the conversion. Because b&w is already an abstraction from reality I felt I could push the blacks and whites as far as they needed to go. Doing so would have been par for the course in the days of film. Having created the b&w version I then went back to the original file. Being a little more gentle with Lightroom’s sliders I produced a colour image I’m happy with. Which do you prefer?

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Golden Hour at the Steel Works.

Family duties took me down to Swansea at the end of March, which gave me the opportunity to spend a day around Port Talbot and its steel works. It seemed like eighteen months since I had last been there (see this post) but on checking my files I discovered that it was three and a half years ago! “Doesn’t time fly” doesn’t really do that justice……

If you live in Wales you will probably have heard the steel works is threatened with closure, yet again, and this time it looks final. Its owners – the Indian multinational Tata – say that the plant loses over £1m a day, and if that is true who can blame them. But it is by far the biggest employer in the area and some 2800 jobs are likely to be lost, while there must be countless other local businesses whose survival depends indirectly on it. It is also the biggest single polluter in Wales, and is responsible for 2% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. Tata say that once the plant is levelled, they will build an electric arc furnace to recycle scrap steel into new steel. This process emits less carbon dioxide but is also less labour-intensive than making virgin steel in a blast furnace. Many jobs will still be lost, and, to be honest , Port Talbot and its environs are already pretty run down. Such are the dilemmas involved in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

I had been studying the OS 1:25000 map of the area in great detail before my visit, and had identified some potential new viewpoints. But my first location was the one I discovered on my previous visit, on the hillside directly above Port Talbot town centre. From there one looks south-eastwards towards the works, the nearest point of which is more than a mile away. I was going to need my long lens and a tripod.

Over a period of an hour or so I took a range of images at focal lengths from 250mm – 300mm , that’s x10 to x12 magnification. Weather conditions were quite atmospheric; dry and mostly cloudy with little wind, lending an almost monochromatic air with very subtle colouration to the photographs (see above). It was a good start. I then moved further uphill, but found the visual impact of the works was less powerful the higher I got. My second location involved an steep drive on a minor road above the works and then an easy walk. I was higher still here and even more disappointed. From this height the works had a toytown feel to it. It just didn’t hit home at all.

Driving back through the backstreets of Port Talbot I took a left turn on a hunch and was soon confronted by a colourful mural on two walls of a garage. A man was fixing his car nearby so I went over for a quick chat. It turned out that this garage wall was the exact location of the “Port Talbot Banksy” which suddenly appeared in December 2018. It had been bought by an art dealer and removed for safe-keeping, but remained on display in the town until 2022. The mural that I came across, purely by chance, by the street artist Steve Jenks, has none of the subtlety of the original. But the works features prominently on it, which adds another layer of human connection with the steel industry in Port Talbot.

It was late afternoon by now and I could see a slot in the clouds close to the horizon in the western sky. It looked like I might get some golden hour light on the works if I was patient. I returned to my original viewpoint, and the sun crept slowly towards the slot. When it did finally emerge the steel complex was bathed in golden light. Right on cue a thick cloud of orange-brown smoke belched out from the centre of the complex and dissipated into the air above it. It was an exciting moment but………..

……………it felt almost indecent to photograph this filth in such gorgeous conditions. Does the landscape photographer have a responsibility to be honest about their subject matter, or to portray it in the best conditions possible? My day’s photography had asked more questions than it had provided answers. But I’m going to go out on a limb here: this is one of the best photographic locations in Wales.

For now.

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Postcard talk.

*M327 – Snowdon from the Cob, Porthmadog*

Earlier in my career as a photographer I had a whole range of activities which each brought in a certain amount of dosh. Examples include exhibition rental, print sales, calendar sales, book production and sales, and commissioned work. For a number of years I freelanced for the Wales Tourist Board, which was the closest I ever had to a money spinner. But it was a soul-less activity and I felt just like a cog in a machine. Throughout all this time my bread and butter income was through the sale of postcards. But I always felt that with a growing track record like mine I would be able to drop the postcards and work on bigger projects for prestigious clients.

How wrong I was! The bigger projects dropped away for all sorts of reasons and with some minor exceptions all I’m left with is postcard sales. Sales are nothing like they were at their peak say 15 years ago (about 30%) but they do seem to have bottomed out in recent years. There is a whole host of reasons for this – like the use of mobile phones, the ridiculous cost of postage, and shop closures. For example, in the last 18 months three of my very few outlets in south Pembrokeshire have closed; one is now a cafe, one a toy shop and another sells secondhand books. None are interested in postcards. And yes, you do have to develop a very thick skin……

I’m not sure how many people understand how postcards are printed. To cut a long story short, commercial litho printing involves pulling a large sheet of paper/card through a machine. In the case of my postcards, and depending on the machine, the sheet holds 16 or 32 different designs. For the lowest unit price the sheet needs to be full. The drawback is that you end up with the same number of each individual design. And of course some postcards sell much better than others. There are always difficult decisions to be made.

I had been using the same printer for a number of years and their machine held 32 designs. But I began to get frustrated by some aspects of dealing with them and sometimes with the actual printing quality. I decided to look around for another printer last summer. The company I eventually settled on had a machine which used a sheet holding sixteen designs. I didn’t realise at the time that my main competitor had used them as well, but I suppose that is a kind of recommendation. Anyway, the printing went well, and if anything the print quality was better. Things were looking up! I contacted them over the winter to discuss another order.

There had been changes. They had disposed of their litho machine and installed a digital printer. My experience of commercial digital printing had been very poor but I was reassured that this was not your typical digital machine. Some samples were printed for me from the files that had been used for my last job and they were virtually identical. I couldn’t fault them. The biggest advantage was that it is now possible to have any number of each design printed. So if I needed 1000 of one design and 400 of another that was absolutely fine. The unit cost depended only on the total number of cards printed. So I decided to take a punt.

The cards are absolutely fine. Printing quality seems to be as good as the litho printer, and I’m able to tailor the order more closely to what I think will sell. I can’t help wishing these machines had been available many years ago.

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