Sunrise at Stone Henge 2014

Every year I hear about folks going down to Stonehenge for the solstice and I kick myself both for forgetting it was coming up and simply for not going.

This year, I vowed, would be different!

This year, I swore, I would be there!

I was!

I had a few problems.
I was mostly stood up at the last minute by everyone who said they were interested in going*.
* - Whilst they all had perfectly reasonable and understandable explanations for not being able to go I will be visiting each of them individually in the dead of night and reproducing the summer solstice to their inconvenience by gradually shining a tablelamp in their sleeping faces.

By the time I'd given up on people joining me and got myself ready to go I was set to arrive at around 01:00am.
On arrival I was directed to a parking spot to the side of one of the fields towards the rear. A great number of people had already arrived, a significant number of which were loitering around their vehicles rather than heading down to the stones. (Sunrise being at 04:43'ish, I guess there was no rush)

Not sure what it was going to be like I decided to minimize my gear, carrying only my camera and a second lens. I can't imagine what I was thinking but somehow I reached the rationale that I should leave the tripod behind.

"If i need it..." I thought "... I can just come get it."
It was the most regrettable decision I made, with no stabilisation I had to pump my ISO quite far and I could only do so much to avoid hand-shaken shots. I could have done so much better but what I didn't realise was that the stones themselves were over a mile and a half away from where they had me park. The path was quite indirect and not uncomfortably hilly, I think it took somewhere along the lines of 30-40 minutes to walk.

Once in, I proceeded to clamber over all the sleeping solstice goers, carefully pick my way through the crowds and just get as up and close to the stones as I could, making sure to take full advantage of the fact that I could be so close.
As I did so I snapped away as best I could.

I was happy that in some of these shots, even though they are handheld, I did still manage to get some stars in the background, something I wasn't sure would be possible with all the floodlighting.

I decided to leave before sunrise as I had responsibilities at home to deal with for the remainder of that day and have a couple of hours sleep would be needed and I didn't want to get stuck behind a queue of several thousand people trying to lave the carpark. Overall though the evening was very nice. Not quite what I expected with there being food vans there with flashing signs and everything was floodlit(for safety).
There were a lot of people there when I was there 01:00am-3:30am and the numbers were steadily growing as I left. The atmosphere though was friendly and even though I was nervous about my gear before leaving the car I was more than comfortable once I started snapping.

If the weather is promising I'll be back next year, if not again this year for the winter solstice... fully equipped this time though.

Dawn at Kimmeridge 02

Another Dawn trip down to the Bay. This time with my new wide angle lens.

Things did not go quite to plan however. According to the met office this morning would be the last day of decentish weather for the next week and the firing ranges were opened for the Easter holidays which should've given me the opportunity to explore a litte further along the coast to get some slightly different shots. However I failed to check the tide times so halfway through the morning it became clear (on reviewing the photos i'd taken so far) that  the rockpools I was intending to shoot were fairly quickly disapearing and, if i wanted any guarantee of making it back to my car without getting my feet wet before I go to work, i'd best leave immediately.

For my first test run with a new lens I'm quite happy. I got a suprising amount of stars and am hoping to do the same again soon. It's slightly disapointing that my exposures were just a little too long to avoid minor star-trailing but I've done my research now and should be able to avoid it in future.
There's also a disapointingly large volume of noise in the images which i'm currently researching how to compensate for.

I haven't yet worked out what colour temperature to apply to the images so you'll likely notice some slightly different colour tints.
All of these photos are taken at night, nothing but the full moon for illumination.

The next few photos were taken whilst I explored the purbecks after leaving the bay

Dawn at Kimmeridge

For the past couple of weeks the weather in the UK has been particularly good. I couldn't help but take advantage of this and after doing a test run one weekend I worked out I could get to some pretty good photographic locations at dawn, set up, take some shots, pack up again and still make it on time for work.

This has meant I've ended up spending most mornings over the past few days sat on a rock at Kimmeridge Bay, watching the sunrise behind Clavell Tower in the Isle of Purbecks and... once every few minutes, adjusting my camera settings.

It's been great to see this part of the country at this time fo the day. I'm not really even sure what inspired me to start making the trips but i'm very glad for doing it and, weather permitting and whether the MOD allow acces to the firing ranges I will continue to do so.

Mupe Bay: Part 3 The return to Mupe

This weekend I had yet another trip to Mupe Bay. This time accompanied by a couple of friends and this time after having done some research.

Sun rise was apparently at 5:55am, giving the distance to Lulworth Bay by car and how far it is necessary to walk we got up at 4:30am to make sure we got there in time.

We got there at the very second of sun rise.

Mupe Bay: One step forward and two steps back

I went on a little adventure this weekend with a friend of mine who is also like to do photography. I've been to a fair number of the places in and around Dorset that have good views to offer but I recently heard of somewhere new. A place named Mupe Bay.

To search for it on the internet tends to bring up some nice photographs of the area but not much else so I wanted to see it for myself.

The bay is only really accessable via a coastal walk from the far more well known Lulworth Cove unless you have a boat so I expected a hike over cliff tops. To ensure we got good shots I assumed a time when the tide was out would potentially best so I planned to arrive at Lulworth with the tide in, assuming the time taken to walk to the Bay would be enough for the tide to go back out again.

Sadly on arrival it became clear that when the tide is in the best path for us to take would be blocked, forcing us to make a detour that we thought would be suitable but turned out to be half in the wrong direction and instead of being the quickest route to the clifftop turned out to be the slowest possible route to the otherside of the cove. Dejected by our failure to get that much right we ended up focusing our efforts on Lulworth Cove for the rest of the morning.

Mupe Bay will have to wait for another day but this is the closest we got to photographing anything there.

Some early morning mist still hanging around and a mere glimpse of Mupe Bay can be spotted over the cliff side.