Godrevy Lighthouse and Rocks - Photography Week 40

Back in May 2016, I took a series of images from the rocks in front of Godrevy Lighthouse in Cornwall. In the subsequent post I said that there would be better days to capture some of the compositions and these are the results from my latest visit.

The difference between the results in May and my latest visit is the angle of the setting sun which has moved by approximately 45 degrees. Instead of shooting broadly into the light, as I did in May, there is now side lighting on the rocks and the lighthouse. The results are less harsh, the tones are warmer, and tools like polarising and graduated filters are more effective:

Whilst waiting for the light to move into the golden hour, I started looking in more detail at the rock formation. The bedrock at Godrevy is mud and sandstone and forms part of the Devonian Porthtowan Formation. The section in front of the lighthouse takes a real pounding from the sea and has a salty, bleached appearance with many pits and grooves. I tried to represent this in a series of abstract photographs plus a wider angle context shot:

Rocks at Godrevy- Photography Week 21

During the winter I had largely ignored the rocky area in front of the lighthouse at Godrevy. This was mainly due to the weather conditions and the pounding waves. Whilst I have seen some very dramatic shots captured from this vantage point, I tend to be on the very conservative side of extreme photography!

As we move into the summer the seas are much calmer and it is easier to set up and make some compositions. These are some of the results:

Later, there was an opportunity for some shots into the light. Picking a foreground was a bit of challenge. In the end I favoured a shallow foreground with a compositional arc to the lighthouse and the setting sun. The cloud line makes the final results a little messy and I think there will be better days for capturing this particular scene.