Going on a family holiday is a stressful time for a photographer; Working out how to balance time between family and photography can often lead to unstaisfaction for both parties. In addition to that, quite often family holidays tend to occur in the summer months when sunrise times are particularly unreasonable, there are too many people around and clear blue skies (if they happen) are fine for non photographers but useless for us. So, how can you make the most of this time? Well, the best thing to do would be to put down the camera and just enjoy the experience, but as most of us are obsessive compulsives by nature I think this is probably unreasonable. My personal solution, whilst on a family trip to Northumberland, was to bite the bullet and get up stupidly early for half the mornings and then explain to the family that I would be dissapearing about 8.30 to get a few sunsets in. If I got up at 3.30 I could be back in bed for 5.30 and get the second half of my 6 hours sleep!
So how did this work in Northumberland? Well the one disadvantage of this is that you don't get much time to scout out areas so instead of trying to cover as much ground as possible I decided to stick to one area, which was easily accessible by car, and work my way around it. I decided to only visit the end of the Wynding and Budle bay as the sun set just opposite Budle bay to the left of Holy Island (see evening shot in gallery link at bottom for example).
The Evenings
Budle Bay is a mile walk from the Wynding down to Budle and back again wth a few areas of geological interest between. The first evening I walked fairly aimlessly around the dunes in Budle and was dissapointed that the sand was mostly trodden over and the pictures I took were a little disappointing. I did manage to get a photo of Bamburgh's famous fighting caterpillars though! (see below). It was only on the final night that I found a clean area, a subdued sun and a composition that gave me the feeling of the area (See picture below).
The main issue I was getting was footsteps in the sand limiting my options. However, on one evening the wind was blowing a gusty 20mph and had managed to shift quite a bit of sand against some of the nice rock features just past the end of the Wynding. The mini sand dunes that were created reminded me the larger African dunes and I decided to try to create something that brought out this foreign feel. I had to work very low (burying my tripod in the sand in an attempt to get the rocks above the horizon) and was covered in sand at the end of the process but I hope the result works.
One of my goals during the holiday was to use less film, to try to capture each shot in only a single sheet. This, combined with my other goal of comparing Astia, Velvia and Provia (to be featured in my next blog entry) meant I only had time to work with two compositions and I think I slightly overexposed the first and underexposed the second - ah well, these are the lessons I wanted to learn by only taking one shot..
The Mornings
I had a bit of success on the second of my morning outings where I was rewarded with a beautiful orange, blue, yellow pink and purple pre dawn glow. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything to create something with a strong compositional structure and ended up using the shapes of the rocks to introduce some visual movement through the frame. I suppose I could say that "It's the colour stupid!" but that would be a cop out - I really just let nature spray pretty colours onto my film.
The Family Outings
I did take the camera out with me to a couple of locations, once to Dunstaburgh and once to Holy island, and managed to sneak off on a couple of occasions to take a 'big picture'. The first was of Holy island itself with one of it's mooring links in the foreground (hardly original compositionally but I did like the structure of mid ground rocks as mini mountain range). The second was of one of the upside down boats (the one with the semi-famous green padlock) where I found the only composition that allowed me to exclude the Bank Holiday milling minions.. The result is a picture I really like for it's portrayal of the shed but that is ulimately unbalanced because of the very close cropping I ended up making.
Our Dunstanburgh day out was a walk from Embleton, across the dunes to the castle and back again. We stopped next to Saddle Rock and I found an abstract composition of the lichen and rocks which worked really well on digital (although the large format version didn't work as the tide had dropped and the white line of the surf edge. I was also tempted to get a shot from behind the castle over the lake but the light failed and my feet were getting tired..
The only other picture I took was on a bored evening when I decided to play with "floral" shots in the garden. The result should do niceley for a birthday card or two :-)
Conclusion?
So was trip a photographic or family success? Well I spent most of the time with my family and didn't let photography get in the way, but I also spent a few mornings and evenings on my own working around some ideas I had been thinking about and experimenting with different films. Most of my exposures were within half a stop ofcorrect but I sitll need to get better. I'll be taking B sheets for important photos still I think. Also, the main photograph was a little dissapointing as the effect I was after only really worked on the SLR shot - the picture is still strong, but not quite what I was after.. I need to think more before I take a shot..
I've included a little web gallery of my SLR notes from the mornings and evenings I was out.
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