At the risk of looking like I only photograph one location each year I've a second image from Trevose Head that's made the grade.
As I described in my first post about Trevose Head, I was unhappy with my first composition and so returned to remake my image a few weeks later. I didn't feel the light was as good on this second visit and although I was happier with the composition, the memory of the light was still playing on my mind when I laid out the transparencies on the light table.
This is the very last image I made that day and was actually an experiment on how long an exposure I could wring out of a sheet of Velvia 50. Light was failing fast and some quick mental arithmetic (my maths teacher was right, it did come in handy one day!) told me I needed a 2 minute exposure to account for reciprocal failure.
The long exposure blurred the sea and clouds creating a lovely effect but I had not used any warm up filtration to compensate for the cool light after sunset and the overwhelming colour on my transparency was blue. The image was very cold and not at all what I had hoped for. I dismissed the results as inferior to my first images as noted on my earlier blog entry.
I rarely throw away, or delete, images on first viewing. Often the memory of the hard work that went into the failed image is too great. I find leaving such an image until the emotion of the day has faded leads to a more objective assessment of the work.
Now two months on, I took another look at the transparency yesterday. I realised the blue colour cast could easily be remedied during the scanning process and the image had great potential after all. So half an hour later, with the transparency scanned and colour corrected, I was looking at a very different photograph to the one I posted in July and many ways I feel this is superior.
And just in case you really do think I only photograph one location a year, here's another of the lighthouse. A much simpler silhouette image, this was taken on the way back to the car park at the end of my first trip. I didn't have time to set-up the view camera so this was as about as much as a “grab shot” as is possible with a heavy Mamiya RB67 and tripod!
This is the very last image I made that day and was actually an experiment on how long an exposure I could wring out of a sheet of Velvia 50. Light was failing fast and some quick mental arithmetic (my maths teacher was right, it did come in handy one day!) told me I needed a 2 minute exposure to account for reciprocal failure.
The long exposure blurred the sea and clouds creating a lovely effect but I had not used any warm up filtration to compensate for the cool light after sunset and the overwhelming colour on my transparency was blue. The image was very cold and not at all what I had hoped for. I dismissed the results as inferior to my first images as noted on my earlier blog entry.
I rarely throw away, or delete, images on first viewing. Often the memory of the hard work that went into the failed image is too great. I find leaving such an image until the emotion of the day has faded leads to a more objective assessment of the work.
Now two months on, I took another look at the transparency yesterday. I realised the blue colour cast could easily be remedied during the scanning process and the image had great potential after all. So half an hour later, with the transparency scanned and colour corrected, I was looking at a very different photograph to the one I posted in July and many ways I feel this is superior.
And just in case you really do think I only photograph one location a year, here's another of the lighthouse. A much simpler silhouette image, this was taken on the way back to the car park at the end of my first trip. I didn't have time to set-up the view camera so this was as about as much as a “grab shot” as is possible with a heavy Mamiya RB67 and tripod!
I knew there was a reason I had lugged both cameras with me that day!

