Beach Walk - Photographic Week 29 (2016)

Whilst my son enjoyed a surfing lesson, I had a couple of hours to walk along the beach from Gwithian towards Hayle. 

Summer photography is often characterised by deep shadows and bright highlights but if the sun is high and diffused, the tones can cluster together. Increasing the exposure pushes this clustering to the right of the histogram producing images that are dominated by light tones. The results can been seen as either lacking contrast or, preferably, having a painterly finish:

A black and white conversion is often the first port of call for wispy clouds in blue skies:

At several places on the beach there is water run off from the cliffs leaving mottled and streaky ash coloured patterns in the sand:

In other places branching patterns are created:

In the dunes above the beach I spotted patches of Restharrow (Ononis reperis):

The cliff face shows evidence of intense geological folding:

This area is characterised by Devonian mudstones and sandstones of the Porthtowan formation and the slates and siltstones of the Mylor State formation (ref: iGeology app). These are some of the patterns and colours close up:

Having finished on the beach we stopped off at Hell's Mouth: a cliff top view which demonstrates how potentially unstable the rock formations are in this area:

This is an amazing YouTube clip of a rock fall at Hell's Mouth recorded four years ago.

Portscatho Formation Polyptych - Photography Week 4 (2016)

In a recent post, I wrote about my motivation for photographing rock formations together with a description of one image that I had labelled 'a good one'.

In this post I am reflecting back to a set of images taken along Falmouth sea front during January (photography week 4, 2016). Instead of focusing on the merits of a single photograph, I have combined a number of images into a polyptych (1).

A polyptych aims to create a multi-layered view. Each component can be looked at either individually, as one whole image, or a series of relationships between the sections. If the later is achieved the polyptych has depth and is more interesting for the viewer.

This particular polyptych is part of a wider project to present the coastline around Falmouth characterised by the Devonian Portscatho Formation of sand and mudstone formed 375 to 392 million years ago (ref: iGeology app). 

These are a selection of other rock images that were not included in the above polyptych but could be used in the future:

(1) I have used the term polyptych to describe a photograph made from many individual images or sections. Perhaps more common is a triptych - a three part work. More information about the origin of polyptychs can be found here.