wales – Page 2 – Tales from Wild Wales

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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Another visit to the Teifi Marshes.

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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Edit: I have since found that Topaz PhotoAI DOES give a good sharp result when used on this image and I am considering purchasing it.

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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Letters to the Editor (4)

February and early March saw farmers protesting all over Wales. The object of their hatred was the Welsh Government’s proposed Sustainable Farming Scheme, as a result of which, to benefit from further public subsidies, farmers would be required to set aside a certain percentage of their land for woodland and wildlife habitat. Our local newspaper – the Cambrian News – carried numerous articles, editorials, and letters which were uncritically supportive of the protestors. There was at no attempt at any stage to explain why the subsidy system needs reform. I thought it was about time the full picture was made clearer. This was my letter :

Over much of Wales farming is completely unviable financially and without subsidies it would naturally come to an end. The last few decades have seen massive amounts of public money being poured into agriculture in Wales to enable farmers to keep farming. Not that long ago Ceredigion was a patchwork of mixed farms which supported a wild variety of wildlife. Since then the intensification of farming systems has, often inadvertently, led to much of our farmland becoming inhospitable to wildlife. Biodiversity on farmland has plummeted, and in many cases disappeared altogether. Water quality in some of our rivers is, frankly, disgraceful, partly due to run-off from agricultural land.

The Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015 commits the Welsh Government to reversing the decline of biodiversity on farmland by 2030. In the wider UK Michael Gove first coined the phrase “public goods for public money”. The Agriculture Bill (Wales) 2023 introduced the idea of ‘sustainable land management’ into Welsh law. The SFS is the Welsh Government’s attempt to put these ideas into practice. The recent consultation round was the third and final one. Following the first two a “co-design” process took place at which farmers were closely involved, and the Welsh Government published a 65 page report in September 2021. It is available online for anyone to read. To suggest that in any way the SFS is undemocratic is very wide of the mark.

The requirement for 10% of the land to be planted with trees appears to be an attempt to offset carbon emissions while at the same time – if the right species are planted – adding much needed woodland habitat. Many farms will already contain hedgerow trees, shelterbelts and actual woodland which would count towards that target. Other measures in the scheme are designed to restore nature on farmland, or maintain it if it still exists. It may not need any particular action by the landowner to comply. But fulfilling these requirements (and others) would be needed in return for continued support from the public purse.

Whether this scheme in its current form is the right way to do it, I’m not sure. Whether the funding will be available to make it a success is another unknown. But we should support the Welsh Government in their attempt to balance food production, carbon sequestration and nature recovery on Welsh farmland. And the least the media can do is to report all sides of the argument.

What I didn’t say in the letter (but did in my consultation response) was that whenever any change is proposed which might benefit wildlife on farmland , the farming unions react with horror and outrage. Two other recent examples come to mind. Firstly the possible re-introduction of beavers to Welsh rivers. Any number of “consultations” have taken place but Natural Resources Wales has never approved it. Despite this beavers seem to be finding their way here somehow, though. Secondly, the very ambitious “Summit to Sea” project which foundered following hysterical and misleading objections from some farmers and their Unions (see this post). This project is still progressing under a new name in a very diluted form with the RSPB at the helm.

Many of us, the public, politicians and the media alike, still seem to believe that farmers can do as they like in our shared landscapes while continuing to be funded by the public purse. It really is time that this particular gravy train came to an end.

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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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Two nights in a quiet place.

If I am in the Porthmadog area I have a favourite place to park the van overnight. It is a delightful spot on the banks of the estuary, overhung by oak trees, and no ………. I’m not going to tell you where it is! From there it is a short drive to the Cob, the causeway that runs across the Glaslyn estuary just south of Porthmadog, from which one can look inland to the Snowdon massif. This is surely one of the most iconic landscapes in the whole of Wales but strangely enough not a big seller as far as postcards are concerned. I’ve always wondered why: perhaps people just don’t notice it as they hurry along the main road across the causeway.

I’ve spent two nights at this quiet spot in recent weeks. One morning at the end of August I woke early, had a very quick breakfast, and drove straight to the Cob. I’m sure that one of these mornings I will catch the view from there to Yr Wyddfa in perfect conditions, probably with a low fog across the marshes in the foreground, but this was not going to be it. A bank of high cloud obscured the rising sun. After a short wait I drove on to Borth-y-gest, a village set around a small harbour just west of Porthmadog.

Arriving at the main car park about 8 a.m., and the only vehicle there, I put my head back against the headrest and promptly fell asleep. About ten minutes later I woke up and was aghast to find a parking ticket attached to my windscreen! The parking warden could easily have tapped on my window and asked me to leave; instead he must have crept silently up to the van, stuck down the ticket and made a quick getaway. Talk about a hit and run incident……..

Well, Borth-y-gest is an idyllic little place so after the initial shock had worn off I decided to make the most of a now sunny morning. I need to do a new postcard of the area so set off downstream along the banks of the estuary to see what I could find. The tide was high but receding and the best photograph of the morning came on my return to the harbour (above). It’s a classic “picture-postcard” image, perfectly lit, with good colour saturation; it won’t win any prizes but it will suit my purposes perfectly.

I spent another night at my secret place last week. Not so secret, I now realise: I’ve never had to share it but this time found a rather large motor-home already in occupation. Acorns falling onto the van roof and rolling groundwards woke me several times during the night and I was surprised to also hear light rain falling. I hoped that did not bode ill for the following day.

In fact it was still raining on and off at dawn but it looked like the sun was about to rise into a clear blue sky. These looked fantastic conditions for the photographer and I didn’t even bother with breakfast. There was nothing doing at the Cob (again) so headed straight for Borth-y-gest. Parking more carefully this time, I walked along the coastal footpath overlooking some tiny beaches and the still (but rising) waters of the estuary to the mountains beyond. A rainbow appeared out to the west, but it wasn’t until I began my walk back to the village that the most spectacular conditions were revealed. Brilliant “Godbeams” could be seen across the estuary as intermittent rain and cloud drifted seawards. They were even reflected in the waters of the estuary (See main pic).

It has been suggested that these were “crepuscular rays”; but strictly speaking this term refers to a similar phenomenon that occurs close to sunrise and sunset. Not wishing to split hairs, though, they are formed in the same way. I have always believed that if you follow the path of these rays upwards they will converge at the actual position of the sun, and this shows quite clearly in the photograph. And yet the sun is actually so far away (93,000,000 miles) that its rays on reaching us are virtually parallel. This appears to be an anomaly, to say the least. One website suggests –

“Next time you see sunrays, imagine them for what they really are, miles long columns of sparkling sunlit air highlighted by the darkness of adjacent unlit voids. Let the mind fly around and through them to give them solid form that replaces the flattish way we normally see the sky”

I still can’t get my head around it so if anyone can explain it in plain English, please feel free!

Later in the day I made for the hills above Harlech on the south side of the estuary. By mid-afternoon the atmosphere had completely cleared and the light was crisp and transparent. I took a series of images back towards Porthmadog and Moel Hebog (above). My quiet place is there, somewhere…….

Postscript : I successfully challenged my parking ticket.

The quote is from : https://atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/rayform.htm

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