Just after the New Year we went for a low tide walk along the beach at Ynyslas. It was stunning …… blue skies, no wind….everything you could want from a winter’s day. We walked from the golf club car park, round the end of the dunes to the visitor centre (soon to be closed); then after a cup of coffee back along the board walk to return to the car park along the beach. By this time lengths of the peat underlying the sand had been exposed. As I walked along, Jane drew my attention to a small flock (21 birds) of sanderling which had alighted on the peat just behind me. I hesitated for a while before extracting my camera from my backpack. I expected them to fly off immediately, but they stayed put, probing in the peat for food, and running backwards and forwards as the waves washed in and out. I had two minutes with them before they flew off as quickly and mysteriously as they had arrived.
Enjoy the photographs!
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In an earlier post I explained how I had been unable to sharpen a particularly good (……. I thought) image in Lightroom. Under normal circumstances Lightroom does everything I need, including sharpening, but it is not designed for more extreme situations. In my post I explained that I had successfully sharpened the image in Topaz Sharpen AI, but that my trial version added a watermark. Unfortunately it was no longer available and its successor, Photo AI, costs close on $200. How much was a I willing to pay for such specialised software?
Luminar Neo also has built-in AI sharpening and is available for a more reasonable price. The marketing spiel for this software suggests that it is aimed mainly at those who wished to replace skies in their images, which is anathema to me. But I swallowed my pride and signed up for a trial. It seemed to sharpen my problem file but I could not get it to work as a plug-in to Lightroom, which was a pain. It seemed there must have been a bug in the software and their technical people were using me as a guinea pig to trouble-shoot it. I gave up. Then Photo AI appeared at a “sale” price and I took the plunge.
I have recently been going through my files from the last decade for a potential sale to a rewilding charity. In some ways this is a tedious chore involving making countless decisions between images differing only by minutiae. However at the same time I was able to re-discover some that I had completely forgotten about. The one above is a case in point.
It was taken during lockdown in July 2020. I visited a local pond a number of times during that spring and summer, as it was within walking or easy cycling distance of my home. On one visit a family of stoats appeared out of the vegetation and began playing on the road. There was probably a mother and three kits. I was treated to a close encounter with this lovely group of animals which lasted about ten minutes. The youngsters were aware of me but didn’t seem to recognise me as a threat. It was the sort of encounter that wildlife watchers dream about. There was plenty of action which was quite a challenge for me with my slow reflexes. Much of the activity seemed to be play-fighting; the sequence from which the main image was taken ending up with the right-hand animal appearing to be “playing dead” on the ground.
I came away with quite a selection of images but many were below par in some way, mainly due to the narrow depth of field that long lenses produce. In the main image the left-hand animal was perfectly sharp but the one on the right just wasn’t. Fortunately Photo AI has worked wonders on the out of focus animal and I have a photograph I can feel very proud of. One for the Countryfile calendar, perhaps………*
*Or possibly not…..I’m still a professional. But you see what I mean?
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This last year has been a humdinger for seeing the Aurora Borealis, with two stunning displays here in mid-Wales on May 10th (see this post) and October 10th. But on September 12th, which happened to be my birthday, I was just about enter a restaurant in Tywyn for my birthday meal when an aurora red alert arrived on my phone. Eek…..what a dilemma!
I decided to go ahead with the meal and not let Jane (my partner) down. An hour and a half later, the meal over, we headed down to the mouth of the Afon Dysynni , a couple of miles away, where we planned to spend the night in the camper. It is here that the railway line and coastal footpath cross the river just before it reaches the sea. At high tide the river water backs up into a lagoon known as Broadwater; and as it happened there was no wind, the water was still and the sky was clear. Would there still be any sign of the aurora?
I could immediately see that the northern sky looked “unusual”, so I set up the camera on a tripod, and began taking a series of images. I wouldn’t say I’d perfected my technique by any means but I had learned from some mistakes I have previously made with long exposures. Despite it being pitch black I could see that the silhouettes of the bridges set against the night sky would make an excellent composition. It wasn’t until I examined the files on my PC that I could see what the sensor had recorded and after some judicious processing came up with an image I’m really pleased with.
To the naked eye very little could be seen but if only our (my?) vision was more sensitive to low light levels it would have looked something like this. Even the version you can see above is drab in comparison to the sparkling processed original viewed on my monitor. I could write a book – well maybe an essay – on aurora photography and what it tells us about our own vision, but that will have to wait until another day.
On a lighter note, I usually make marmalade in the run-up to Christmas and give a few jars away as presents. This morning I left a jar by the recycling bags for the bin-men to collect. I heard the lorry drawing away so rushed outside to see if they had taken it. It was still there. I ran after them and held the jar up. “Ow, thees ees resoyclin, we down’t tek glass” he said in his brummie accent. I handed the jar over and wished him a happy Christmas.
So thanks for continuing to read my ramblings and with best wishes, seasons greetings and a virtual jar of marmalade to you all.
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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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I ended my post of January 20th this year by saying “One of these days I’ll get a decent picture of a water rail.“. On October 10th I mentioned water rails again and said “My record with them is pretty sketchy. They are nimble and fast moving and tend to appear only close to dusk or dawn.“
On another visit to the Teifi Marshes at Cardigan early one morning last week all that changed. No sooner had I entered the mallard hide and sat down, than one of the little blighters started squealing from the tiny island just in front of the hide. Soon the bird appeared, quickly followed by another. It seemed as if there was some kind of dispute going on between them. This wasn’t the shy and retiring species of the text books. About nine thirty one emerged from the island’s reeds , walked towards the hide, immersed itself for a short swim, and disappeared again. A few minutes later it re-emerged and swam most of the way towards the reeds to the left-hand side, only to decide that it preferred being on the island after all, and returning. This was brazen!
I took several hundred images altogether, and it has to be said that entire sequences were either out of focus or just generally mushy. I’ve never understood why this happens. But there were enough sharp and well-lit images for me to be able to say ” When it comes to water rails, I think I’ve cracked it.”
Given that the species is renowned for being more often heard than seen, let alone photographed, I can’t imagine there is anywhere better for getting to grips with them than the Teifi Marshes.
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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.
Godwin(1976)Moore (2024)
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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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 panoramaI 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.
Extraordinary architecture……..
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It almost always worth visiting the Teifi Marshes, a Wildlife Trust reserve near Cardigan (See this post as well). The big attraction for me is the reedbed which has three hides situated within it. Two are on the edge of small pools and the third overlooks a narrow creek draining into the River Teifi. Because the pools are small any wildlife using them tends to be pretty close, and all three hides are popular with wildlife photographers. It is an exceptionally good location to see and photograph kingfishers and even water rails – although my record with the latter is pretty sketchy. They are nimble and fast moving and tend to appear only close to dusk or dawn.
Last Saturday I arrived just after dawn and made my way along the old railway line (now a multi-use path) to the hides. Two otters visited the Kingfisher pool but all that could be seen of them was the top of one head and two trails of bubbles. Entering the Mallard hide I sneezed and a water rail immediately responded with its squealing call. It was on the water’s edge just below the hide but had disappeared by the time I got my gear set up. The same pool was full of activity later on with six squabbling moorhens present. There were also eight little grebes and at one point they all gathered in a semi-circle around the moorhens to watch the battle. Real school playground stuff!
Suddenly two otters appeared from the reeds. I tried to keep calm. My camera was set up correctly to photograph them as they swam slowly across the pool. I had the hide to myself and scrambled from one side to the other in an attempt to avoid having an out-of-focus kingfisher perch in the foreground. (In the end I was able to crop it out) After just one minute the otters disappeared back into the reeds as quickly and as mysteriously as they had arrived.
Unfortunately I didn’t have time to alter the aperture setting so while the otters are sharp the heron is just out of focus. Being a perfectionist this matters to me and I need some sharpening software to improve the image. Lightroom does almost everything I need my software to do but it does have its limitations. Topaz Sharpen AI does a very good job but I only have a trial version and the output has a watermark across it. I can’t get the same results from Photo AI, its successor. Shame!
If you visit the Teifi Marshes, here’s a few pointers. Coming from the south by car head for Cilgerran and take the main drive to the car park and visitor centre (parking fee payable). From the north, it is easier to park in the industrial estate south of the river, between the two bridges, and walk to the hides along the old railway track. For seeing and photographing wildlife dawn is best; by mid-morning the reserve will be the domain of dog walkers, child minders and families with limited interest in natural history. You have been warned!
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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.
About thirty years ago I was part of a team of volunteers who spent a week on Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) looking out for Risso’s dolphins. We stayed at the lighthouse (reserved for researchers) and kept a dawn-to dusk watch for these lively cetaceans using a telescope. There were a number of sightings but all were pretty distant. One day I was on observation duty when I spotted what appeared to be a cetacean “blow” (exhalation) in the far distance. It was angled at 45 degrees to the vertical and may have been a sperm whale. I called the others out but it was just a one-off sighting.
Since then I have drifted away from marine conservation but was aware that risso’s dolphins could be seen from certain locations along the Welsh coast. As well as Enlli there were sightings from Strumble Head in Pembrokeshire, and Point Lynas on the north coast of Anglesey. In fact the latter has become a regular and almost guaranteed location at the right time of year. Many excellent photographs of risso’s have appeared on the internet in the last few years. My first visit was on September 28th 2022, when animals were certainly present and very active, but were too distant to allow successful photography. I decided to try again one day last week.
I stayed overnight with my friend Jonathan in Nantlle, about an hour’s drive on a good day from Point Lynas. We aimed to be there by high tide at 12.20 pm, but for various reasons set off far too late. Further delayed by road works and the remnants of summer holiday traffic it was actually 12.45 before we arrived at the lighthouse. A small group of Sea Watch Foundation volunteers with binoculars and clipboards were just leaving. This was not a good sign! I tentatively enquired if they had seen any dolphins and one girl told me they were “just around the corner”. A woman sitting on the rocks below the lighthouse said she had been watching them for an hour and a half. I took a quick snap as one individual disappeared beneath the waves but another small group weren’t far away. There was a sudden burst of activity from one individual in this group with vigorous tail slaps and much sea-spray, and they disappeared. It all went very quiet. I said to Jonathan “I hope it wasn’t saying to the others “Come on lads, it’s time we were off……”” But it was.
There was a fair bit of porpoise activity in the rough water off the point, and at least one more distant risso’s and a probable bottlenose dolphin or two on the walk back to the car, but that was it. What a lost opportunity!
All was not completely lost, however. I managed one sharp and pleasing image from a couple of bursts before the group disappeared (see above). It made me determined to go back to Point Lynas before the month of September was over.
Tales from Wild Wales 