photography – Page 12 – Tales from Wild Wales

A missed opportunity

Every now and again an image appears in my mind’s eye which never got converted into pixels. It is often a perfect line of a dozen black-necked grebes bobbing up and down in choppy waters close to the edge of the Etang de Vaccares, in the Camargue. I spotted them from the car as I passed by last May, pulled over, identified them and drove on, impatient to get somewhere else. How I wish I had spent just a few minutes photographing these fabulous birds.

On Tuesday last week I finished my final postcard selling circuit and was feeling, well, a little elated. During the day I had received an “Aurorawatch” amber text alert, signifying that the Northern Lights might be visible that night. As darkness fell a cloudless sky revealed itself. No moon was visible and conditions seemed perfect; I was unusually confident about seeing the aurora. About eight o’clock I went outside and looked northwards. There was an distinctive white-ish glow right across the northern horizon and – yes – some faint “pillars” or searchlight beams apparently extending upwards from it. I called Jane, then grabbed my mobile phone to call a few friends who I thought might be interested. By about 8.30 pm the glow was still there but the “pillars” had disappeared.

Our house faces due south/north and there is virtually no light pollution; it is perfect for seeing the aurora. Many nights since moving here I have looked northwards in the hope of seeing something but with no success. Occasionally I have woken in the morning to hear reports that the aurora had been visible the previous evening while I had been watching some garbage on television. But over the years I have at least become very familiar with the northern night sky. I know there is a faint glow to the north-east on a clear night which may emanate from Machynlleth, and another to the north-west. So I was certain that the glow we were seeing was out of the ordinary.

About 11 pm I was in our north-facing bathroom and had a last quick peek out of the window. The glow was still there, but there was now a dark gap between it and the horizon. I grabbed a coat and rushed outside again. This time there was no possible confusion – the dark gap was the normal night sky and the glow was the aurora which had moved southwards. Faint pillars moved across the sky. This was the real thing!

But did I get my camera out? No, I did not. In comparison with the aurora images that are widely available the display was so faint that I doubted it would even register on the sensor. I was happy to enjoy seeing it. I just didn’t appreciate how much more prominent and more colourful the aurora always is in photographs than in real life. Images I saw on television and on the internet the next day showed me what an opportunity I had missed. One photographer from northern England had been able to see nothing with the naked eye but went out to a dark place, pointed the camera northwards and pressed the shutter. Hey presto……. an aurora.

So now there is another image in my mental gallery of untaken photographs. I suppose most people have a gallery like this. Do you?

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The patient birdwatcher.

Last Thursday saw me heading south to the Teifi Marshes, a Wildlife Trust reserve near Cardigan. After days on end cooped up in my home-office cum prison cell thanks to rain and/or wind and/or cloud, the forecast for Thursday was promising. I decided to make an early start. So on a lovely morning I arrived on the banks of the Teifi just a few minutes after sunrise. The tide was high and it was flat calm. What a picture!

I spent a minute or two in each of the hides as I walked down the old railway track into the reserve. At the top of my day’s wish-list, I told another photographer, was a bittern. It may not have been very realistic objective but what the hell………aim high! I quickly moved on until I reached the Kingfisher hide, because a bittern is occasionally seen from there in winter. I’ve always liked this hide because it overlooks a small pool, more or less surrounded by reeds; it is quite an intimate space. I opened a wooden flap and looked out.

At first I didn’t believe it was even actually a bird. It was too still – a fence-post perhaps? Too tall, too thin and too dark to be a bittern, anyway. I dropped my camera bag on to the wooden floor, the sound – I’m sure – carrying far on such a still morning. Trying to keep calm, I retrieved my Canon 5d3 / Tamron 150-600 zoom combo and took another look. It was a bittern, sunning itself! The sound of the shutter would travel equally clearly in these conditions; by the time I had taken the first few shots, there was no doubt that it was aware of my presence. It turned around, then began to walk along the edge of the reeds. Within three minutes of my arrival it had disappeared. I silently cursed my clumsiness.

The other photographer arrived. We waited another ten minutes or so. Then there was movement in the reeds and I located the bird half way up some reed stems. From this launch pad it flew across the pool and disappeared. Would it ever be seen again? In fact, it flew again quite soon and landed opposite the hide. This small reed-bed is somewhat degraded at the moment, the result, apparently, of being used as a starling roost. Over most of the area the reeds are bent over (or broken) to barely half their normal height. (I believe the technical term is “trashed”…..) A crouching bittern was still completely hidden but at full height it was easily visible. Over the course of the day the bittern could be seen with varying degrees of success as it visited various parts of the reedbed. Having said that, though, its position was most often given away by the black cap to its head. It is a wonderfully camouflaged creature. The starling hypothesis gained credence after a couple of crows brought a small dark bird corpse out of the reeds and ate it. There would be plenty of food there for a bittern, too, as they are not that choosy about their diet.

Discussing the finer points of eating a dead starling...... — Discussing the finer points of eating a dead starling……

I was still hoping for the ultimate bittern picture so I stayed put, despite the temperature, which must have been pretty close to freezing in the shade. The six layers of clothing I had donned early that morning weren’t really enough. A succession of other visitors joined me in the hide, and I helped them locate the bird. They donated sandwiches, biscuits and chocolate in return. I hadn’t expected to be there so long! One christened me “the patient birdwatcher”. Towards mid-afternoon the bittern moved quite close to the railway track and I was able to photograph it reasonably successfully through the overgrown hedge (see above). Eventually a combination of thorough cold and fatigue meant it was time to call it a day. But what a day!

I’m still not sure I have the perfect bittern picture. In one otherwise excellent series of images, the bird’s surroundings are untidy. In the picture above the inverted v-shape, out-of-focus reed stem is irritating. I wonder if the content-aware cloning abilities of Photoshop would remove it successfully. Does anyone know?

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Some thoughts on the Cwm Dyli pipeline.

Snowdon and Cwm Dyli, showing the pipeline

The weather has been almost unremittingly cloudy for the past few weeks but there was one exceptional day recently. A cold front had slowly moved southwards overnight and then stalled, leaving the north Wales peaks beneath blue skies in sparkling sunshine, while further south Aberystwyth remained amid the gloom. In the expectation of a good day I travelled up the previous evening and spent the night in my camper van by the shores of Llyn Dinas, near Beddgelert.

It wasn’t a terribly promising start to the day. There was still a veil of cirrus covering large areas of the sky and enough breeze to prevent a reflection in the waters of the lake. But gradually the clearance came and by mid-morning I had clambered high up on a crag above the layby overlooking Llyn Gwynant. Most visitors to north Wales will know it …… everybody stops there and takes a snap. The light was fabulous by that time and one image taken there will be suitable for a postcard at some stage.

A little higher up the valley there is a roadside viewpoint to the summit of Snowdon constructed at some expense by the National Park Authority. It would be a spectacular natural landscape if the Cwm Dyli pipeline had never been built, but it was, and I have always passed it by. But on this occasion wisps of cloud were extending westwards from the summit of Crib Goch and passing above and below Yr Wyddfa itself. Despite the pipeline I couldn’t miss this opportunity.

Thomas Pennant describes “a very fine cataract” at “the upper end of this romantic valley, Nanthwynant” in the account of his visit in 1770. Now there is also a pipeline. It was built in 1905/6 to carry water from Llyn Llydaw, beneath Yr Wyddfa, to the then new hydro-electric power station at the head of Nant Gwynant. This was the first of its type in the UK, built primarily to supply power to the slate quarries at Blaenau Ffestiniog, five miles away over the hills. Despite the demise of the slate industry, the power station – by now a listed building – was re-equipped in 1990 and the pipeline renewed. There was a campaign to have it buried but in spite of the spectacular location at the very heart of the National Park, it was unsuccessful. One cannot help but believe that if the pipeline had been proposed more recently, it would never have got planning permission.

So what does the landscape photographer do? As I had done for many years, drive on by. But not on such a day as this……. A continual stream of cars was arriving and departing the car park so I climbed up the hillside on the opposite side of the road. As I gained height, the landscape opened up, revealing, unfortunately, another length of pipeline. Most of the landscape action was in the top half of the frame, and I knew that I would be cropping the image at the bottom to remove the main section of pipeline. The big dilemma would come later, at the processing stage, when I had to decide whether or not to remove the upper section digitally. I spent a while on the hillside, taking a selection of images with different cloud formations. Then the wind direction changed and the wisps of cloud began to move eastwards from Crib Goch, away from Yr Wyddfa, and the magic was gone. It was time to leave.

Actually, I’m pretty hardline about cloning landscape images. In my opinion landscape images have documentary as well as artistic value. Unless an extraneous item is present only temporarily, it stays. So a crisp packet, a post van or a walker in a red cagoule can go, but a telegraph pole or an electricity pylon stays…….. or a pipeline. There are always going to be grey areas, but it really is stretching the distinction to breaking point to claim, as some people do, that any of the three latter features are also “only temporary.” . When it comes down to removing whole landscape features such as these (or adding them….) in order to make an image more superficially “attractive” it creates a false picture of our surroundings. And as far as I’m concerned, that matters. For more on image manipulation, see this post.

So I thought I would post the above image online and seek out comments, particularly with reference to the pipeline. It started a discussion about the pipeline, why it was there and what it was for. The photograph’s documentary element tells us all sorts of things about the landscape and how much we respect it. I was also expecting a barrage of “clone it out” suggestions, but in fact there was only one, and a big majority for “leave it in”, despite the fact that in some ways it spoils the picture. There was quite a consensus and I must admit that I was relieved. The rise and rise of the cloning tool has not gone as far as I thought it had done.

Just out of interest I thought I’d add an uncropped version of the image which shows the course of the pipeline. I find it disruptive even though it is largely hidden in deep shadow.

Cwm Dyli - uncropped — Cwm Dyli – uncropped

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