Bite-Size Blog Post #73 - The Rumps
Aevening trip to Cornwall and The Rumps was the perfect reminder that, despite my deep connection with Dartmoor National Park, there is still inspiration to be found beyond the tors.
I Need More Cornwall
Over the last few years, I have spent much of my photographic life exploring and capturing images of Dartmoor National Park. It’s my local landscape, and when I decided I needed to get to know it better, I focused virtually all of my photographic energy on capturing images of it. Aside from the odd photography trip outside the national park, I have done little else but photograph tors.
This wasn’t a bad thing for me to do. Having a more intimate knowledge of the environment you want to photograph yields all sorts of benefits, but sometimes you need to poke your head up and see what else is out there.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine, who I hadn’t seen for over a year, messaged me and asked if I wanted to come to Cornwall to meet him for some chips and head out with the camera. He had me at chips!
As we ate our chips on our favourite bench, we pondered where to go. We soon settled on The Rumps, a location he knows well and one that I’m always keen to revisit. It was too early for thrift to be in bloom, but the coastline was still sure to look beautiful.
And beautiful it looked. The clear skies and gentle movement in the water did nothing to detract from the colours of the landscape, softly illuminated by the setting sun. We only photographed the scene for a short while, as the sun prematurely disappeared behind a band of hazy cloud on the horizon, but my time spent there was enough to remind me that I must spend more time on the Cornish coast this year.
Bite-Size Blog Post #72 - Bowerman's Nose
A trip to Bowerman’s Nose to eat doughnuts with a friend. But what about the photography?
So Close
It wasn’t that long ago that I last photographed Bowerman’s Nose, but as I wrote in that previous blog post, it’s a special location and one that I know I’ll continue to return to. In fact, now that we’re into May, the sun begins to rise from a direction that illuminates a completely different side of Bowerman’s Nose, so I expect there will be another blog post, or perhaps even a video before too long.
This time I was back at Bowerman’s Nose with a different friend. We’d spent the evening exploring around the Haytor area, visiting locations such as the red barn at Emsworthy and Emsworthy Tor itself. After some careful contemplation over a doughnut, we decided that Bowerman’s Nose would be the ideal place to wait for sunrise.
The conditions were looking very promising. Most exciting of all was the sky; heavy, brooding, and full of texture. If there was just enough of a gap near the horizon for the sunlight to slip beneath the cloud, we might be treated to something truly special.
As we waited for the sun to edge closer to the horizon, eating more doughnuts, we watched the sky anxiously. Minute by minute, the gap where the sun might break through became smaller and smaller until it disappeared altogether. We’d come so close to witnessing something remarkable, but in the end it simply wasn’t to be.
Still, we weren’t disappointed. Time spent with friends is never wasted, especially when doughnuts are involved, and a visit to Bowerman’s Nose is always a pleasure.
Bowerman’s Nose, Dartmoor National Park - Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 14-30mm f/4 S at 20mm, f/13, 1/5 sec at ISO 64