Third Time Lucky
An ongoing bimble along the Spanish Coast
Lives in a van. Bimbles with a camera. Often pointing his pixel box at scruff. Has been known to run long distances. Would consider cake as a form of payment.
Recovering.
Welcome
Hello, and welcome back to another week behind the lens of a travel photographer and writer, who lives full time in his VW campervan. I’m actually writing this from the kitchen table in my parents home, having made an emergency dash back to Ireland to help out after my dad had a fall and broke his leg. Now that did indeed beg a question as to how a paralysed man could have a fall, but given his dementia, I guess we will never know.
Coming back to Ireland, indeed to the UK, is difficult, not least from a business perspective, as pretty much everything has to go on hold. Luckily I still have a few things in the backlog that should seem me right for the next few weeks, but after that who knows?
Of course family is also important, and I’m glad I made the decision to come back, despite the Crazed Orange Oaf continuing the poke foreign bears, resulting in sky high diesel prices.
Still, I’m not thinking about that right now, instead I’m going back to the beginning of the month when I was hoping that it would be 3rd time lucky visiting Cathedral Beach.
I hope you enjoy …
Extracts from a creative journal
1st March
My third and final day at Cathedral Beach, the previous two attempts to reach the famous arches thwarted by the tides. I had already promised myself that today would be all about photography, leaving my vlogging hat well and truly hung up at home. This can be a difficult decision, as while photography is absolutely my number one priority, I also cannot ignore the value that the videos bring to my journey, both in terms of discoverability, and also with a small but steady income stream.
As I made my way out towards the most interesting part of the beach I attempted a few shots, but the tide was still playing with me, resulting in a couple of happy mistakes.
Sunrise was a few minutes later today, with low tide now later still and after yesterday’s venture further onto the beach I was hopeful for good things. Once again, just like yesterday, the beach was also deserted - it really does look like influencers like their lazy mornings; must be all that twirling tiring them out.
Once again the outgoing tide had left incredible beach patterns of all shapes and sizes, and I couldn’t help but stop to make a couple of images as the pre-sunrise colour developed. I’ve not shot a lot of super wide-angle images over the past five years, but sometimes I do miss it and need to resort to the iPhone.
I find it interesting that both wide-angle and telephoto compositions have their own challenges. With the wide-angle one can become too transfixed on what’s right in front of you, missing obvious issues in the rest of the frame. With the telephoto, while you can distill a frame down to its most basic of elements, sometimes your intention is lost, and what you are left with by the digital darkroom stage is an image of confusion.
The tide had now receded enough for me to then spend the next hour exploring the arches, and I have to say they were worth the wait. The area was, however, very difficult to make a compelling image, and while I tried a few different compositions, I don’t think they really told the story of the place. I’ll need to sit with them for a while before considering the final edit.
With photography challenging, and time against me, I instead replaced the photographer’s head with one of an explorer, and spent the next 30 minutes doing just that. What an incredible location this is, and as I think I said last week, one could easily spend a whole year on this one stretch of beach alone.
As the sun broke the horizon and I started to be pushed back towards the car park by the tide, I once again started to look for a few more intimate scenes, a few of which I rather liked.
All too soon it was time to leave, heading further west, as my travels on the north coast of Spain continued …
4th March
One of the things that surprised me most about travelling full-time in a van is how often plans are modified, changed, or completely rewritten. The original idea had been to park up along the seafront in Foz overnight before continuing the journey. Yet, here I was three days later, under the cover of darkness, out with the camera to see if I could make an image or two for an upcoming vlog.
I had already told myself that today would all be about spontaneity, rather than chasing light or getting frustrated by my location. Having said that, I was a little disappointed to see that I had miscalculated the tide times. This morning, the beach below where I had parked, which only yesterday offered so many choices for intimate images, was now completely covered by water.
Heading down to the harbour, I recorded a little bit of video footage, ensuring to capture the ambient sounds of the morning as the town started to come to life.
Fishing boats and reflections were the order of the day.
A small fishing boat heading out to sea causing wonderful ripples in the breakwater.
On the GFX (50R), I sometimes forget to turn off the RAW+JPG setting (needed when choosing one of the aspect crops), and it’s then that I am reminded of how much I love the rendering of the JPGs in Fuji land. On the flip side, I’m still not 100% happy with how the RAW images are rendered and find it difficult to process them in such a way that replicates what I felt in the field (see below, jpg top, raw below, both SOOC)
Back along towards the van, a small band of mist was forming in the distance. Diffused morning light cast deep tones across the landscape. Time for the tried and trusted 65:24 aspect ratio.
Pulling out of our parking space, it’s time to check the map. A few more dots to explore in this area, but that, as always, will be a story for next time.
Vlog
A couple of vlogs this week, one focused on photography, the other on our travels in the van.
The week that was
A few images from this particular week down through the years.
Other corners of the inter webs you can find me.
The X100 Diaries
My Portfolio
Bimbles magazine
Thanks so much for allowing me a few moments of your time. I hope you have enjoyed my words and images, and if so a quick share amongst your own community will help spread the word.
And if you really enjoyed it you can even consider throwing a few pennies into the tips jar. It helps most with diesel costs for the van to keep me on the road making images.
Until next time .. Happy Pixels …
I really enjoyed your water and sand photos today.