Then I checked the forecast again.

The cloud was forecast to clear by 9. Sunrise was at 8:15. With a bit of give in the timing of the forecast it looked like I might get a good sky for the golden hour, so it was off to bed early(ish) for me and off up to Dartmoor to see what I could get. It is a new year resolution of mine to hunt out new locations and, having spent much of 2011 photographing coastal seascapes, I have added Dartmoor to the list of places that I really should explore this year.

Easing myself into my resolution I thought I’d just potter around Hay Tor and Saddle Tor and see what compositions I could get. Turning up well before sunrise it was still raining, and pretty damn windy, but I had faith in the forecast and wandered off trying to pick out a viewpoint with my head-torch. I found an OK, but not too inspiring, viewpoint on Saddle Tor and, sure enough, with about 20 minutes to go the cloud began to break and there was a good-ol’ letterbox on the horizon promising some first-light low rays to light up the scenery around me.

Then things began to go wrong.

The letterbox filled in, and the cloud passing overhead began to seemingly “bunch up” on the horizon, meaning no decent light until way after sunrise. It was clear overhead so I stayed put on the moor  but took the time to find a better viewpoint. Eventually I found a composition which might work, so set the camera up on the tripod, framed my composition, and waited.  A few minutes later I rooted around in my camera bag — what for I can’t remember now — and was abruptly stopped in my tracks by the sound of the tripod falling over, a victim of the strong winds. I don’t care about a tripod falling over by itself, but when it has a Canon EOS 5Dmkii and 24-105L lens on top, that’s a different matter. I swore, picked everything up, gave it a quick visual check, dried it off, and thought “phew – no damage done”.

[edit #1: Turns out I had a broken leg clamp on my tripod]

This had really hacked me off, and the thickening cloud-bank did little to lighten the mood. For some reason I didn’t like where I was any more but, rather than head home, I headed off looking for a post-sunrise location elsewhere.

Ending up at “the tree“, which I’d always promised myself I would avoid, I set up a compo and waited for the light. There were little patches of light hitting the ground in the middle distance around me now, and I promised myself it would eventually come good where I was. Firing off a test shot to check out the compo, I heard the mirror lock up, and then pressed the shutter release button on my cable release again to expose the scene. Nothing. Tried switching it off and switching it on again. As soon as the camera took power from the battery the mirror would lock up again and I couldn’t release the shutter to take a shot.  I couldn’t get the damn thing to do anything. I packed up and trudged and drove the hour home in a mood thinking, not really of the cost of the repair — things break and I can take the cost of that on the chin, or go to insurance if the cost is too great for that, but mainly of the time I would be without camera. From past experience of sending off camera gear I would be sans camera for anything between 2 and 12 weeks.

[edit #2: The cost of repair clocks in at a jaw-dropping 670 quid -- insurance it is then ...]

Getting home I unpacked and tried the camera again. It worked! For about 3 shots and then failed again. I’m unable to change any of the settings using the buttons on the control panel, and I can’t release the shutter. So, off to the Colchester camera repair centre it is ….

Lets look on the bright side and assume I’ll be camera-less for only 3 weeks. What can I do in the meantime? Well, certainly not “visit Start Point for sunset before the sun starts setting around the headland” which was another of my resolutions. And maybe not “visit the Somerset levels for some starling action” which was another, as they may be gone by the time I get the camera back. So, in no particular order, my next few weeks will be spent:

• Cleaning and servicing my tripod
• Preparing a website
• Preparing images for http://photo2012.net/
• Preparing and submitting photos from the archive to Alamy
• Maybe, just maybe, dusting off the old 20D but I’m not sure I want to. It never produced images remotely as good as my 5dMkii
• Avoiding Flickr and hence seeing what the other local togs are up to
• Maybe buying some film to throw through my ancient, and loved in its time, EOS3. Some moody B&W perhaps.

I’ll finish this post with a shot from the moor from a few years ago, which is the kind of thing I was hoping to get over the next few weeks — and maybe will shortly again if I’m lucky.

2011 has been the year that I’ve really got back into photography. In 2010 in an effort to stimulate myself back into a hobby I really enjoy, but which I’d let slip somewhat since the arrival of my young son, I challenged myself to take and post a monochrome photo a week. This was fun and stretched me a little bit as I hadn’t really done B&W seriously before then. I ended the year with some shots I really liked and had a new “sideline” to my hobby.

Fun and rewarding as that was, my real interest in photography is landscapes and, living in Devon, I have no real excuse for not getting as many of those in the bag as possible. So, in 2011, I chose to get up for sunrise whenever I could and get out and about wherever I was to make the best use of the pre-dawn light and the golden hour. This also coincided with my setting up a new Flickr account, having finally migrated away from the friendly but stagnating pbase which I’d used for the previous 4 years as my photo hosting site of choice. Most of my photo opportunities were limited to dawn rather than dusk as I still want to keep some semblance of a family life and I figure that getting up before the others is better than abandoning them at bedtime.

So, in purely chronological, and not preferential, order here are my favourite photos from 2011:

A long exposure of some steps at Sidmouth leading to the beach at Chit Rocks.

The River Otter as it enters the sea at Budleigh Salterton. A grey dawn was threatening nought, but just as the sun rose, the breaking cloud was lit up magnificently.

I initially cursed this woman standing at the end of the Cobb at Lyme Regis waiting for sunrise. Then I thought "what the hell" and shot away. I just wish that the tide was in a bit more ...

I cursed this chap too when I tried a long enxposure of Dawlish breakwater. However he did manage to sit still for 30s in just this one shot, which was shortlisted in the Landscape Photographer of the Year competition (but which fell at the final hurdle of judging)

A shot of the folly called Dunstall Castle in Worcestershire

Teignmouth Pier in the mist at dawn.

Back to the Otter Estuary for a magical sunrise in December

Dawlish Warren Old Groyne on Christmas Eve - just about the best sunrise I've ever witnessed.

Here’s to more and better in 2012 — I certainly hope so anyway.

The “nearly shot” in question was one of the old groyne at Dawlish Warren in Devon. The beach here is part of a spit of sand dunes which protects the mudflats at the mouth of the Exe estuary. There are numerous wooden groynes along the beach to protect from erosion and, towards the far end, there is the remains of an old “first generation” groyne which isn’t really functional any more but which I’d had my eye on for a little while. I have had a grab shot of this structure in my Lightroom catalogue for a little while but I wanted something a bit more artistic.

The first week I though of visiting I chose at the last minute to go elsewhere. When I checked my Flickr account later that day I’d discovered that my contact Mark Lakeman had been there that day and captured an effective composition with muted colours which I quite liked, but which he wasn’t pleased with, complaining about a “lack of mojo” in his commentary.

The following week I headed off with a view to getting a shot from the right hand side looking out to sea, with the groyne pointing towards the midwinter rising sun. “Curses” I thought when I arrived as I had forgotten that there was a modern groyne just to the left which would hamper any attempt to shoot from this side. Add to that an almost total lack of cloud in the sky and it was my turn  to experience a disappearing mojo. There was a thin strip of could on the horizon and I caught the sun behind it as it rose. Several compositions included pleasing starbursts but, and I have no idea how this happened, none were anywhere near in focus. I put this down to camera shake due to breaking waves moving my tripod in my own Flickr commentary but carelessness was probably a more accurate cause. Anyway, I posted one shot (below) to Flickr and left it at that.

The shot is OK but I had taken a number of more “square on” compositions which looked better overall as there was separation between the posts, but which were also blatantly out of focus. This one is, at least, in focus and offers a pleasing sun reflection and line of clouds on the horizon, but it is not what I was after.

Following Mark’s comments and my own disappointment I nicknamed this place the “Beach of Despair” and spent the next week mulling over what could have been. The sun would soon start rising further north and my chances at rectifying my mistakes would be few unless I wanted to wait until next winter. So it was that on Christmas Eve, I thought I’d give it another go. Rising a good 90 minutes before sunrise I headed off towards Exeter under a thick blanket of cloud. As I turned onto the A379 to head away from Exeter towards Dawlish Warren, I saw a clear slot on the low horizon and my hopes were raised.

Parking the car, I thought I may have been too late, despite it still being 50 minutes or so until sunrise. The horizon was already dark red and I ran and stumbled my way the 15 minutes or so to the old groyne. I made sure that the tripod was firmly in the sand, composed  to hide as much of the new groyne behind the old one as possible, and took extra care focusing to ensure that the posts were pin-sharp. By this stage the sky was turning bright red and I was getting very excited indeed. For about two minutes just before sunrise the sky was intensely red. I took numerous shots until it began to fade, checking, checking, and checking again for focus.

Then I looked behind me.

The sky was turning pinker and there were wispy red clouds against the darker grey layer. I ran around to the other side of the groyne, composed, focused, and kept shooting. Once the sun had risen above the cloud layer, I stopped, packed up, and jumped up and down with clenched fist like a little kid.

One of these latter shots was the first of mine to make it to Flickr Explore, peaking at #49 and my views went through the roof. Web traffic and comments are, of course, not why I am taking photos but it was a really pleasing way to round off the day and was the final justification for wanting to go back and get it right second time around.

And it is in no way the “Beach of Despair” any more …

Come Friday I made my excuses and left the party late afternoon to get the train home. The forecast still looked touch and go, with a clear slot in between a couple of banks of cloud promising just a chance of something good around dawn. I was still unsure where to go — Dawlish Warren for some groyne shots [insert smutty joke here] or Budleigh Salterton for a go at my “default” location of the Otter estuary. It was high tide 90 minutes before dawn so I thought I’d take a crack at the latter with the trees of Otterton ledge reflecting in the high tidal waters (another fave location for high tide is the Cobb in Lyme Regis, but I knew that there was a photographic workshop on that day so gave that a wide berth).

When I woke up it was raining outside and Honiton was under a blanket of cloud. A quick check of various weather-related apps on my smartphone and the chances of a good sunrise looked decidedly slim, so I decided to go back to sleep.

Except I couldn’t.

Half an hour later I gave in, got up, threw on some clothes and headed for the coast, still under a blanket of cloud and with a bit of drizzle continuing to fall. Am I addicted to this hobby of mine?

Half an hour after that I was on location. As well as being a fantastically photogenic location, there is also a bloody great car park about two minutes’ walk from my “tripod holes”. Even though it was 7 a.m. I paid for a parking ticket as this car park is notorious for being checked up on and, as expected, a mere two minutes later I was set up and ready to go. It was an still hour until sunrise and the estuary was totally silent. A bank of cloud overhead was, inch by inch, heading East and threatening the clear sky over the trees. Another bank of cloud on the horizon meant that it would be a few minutes after sunrise until any light show were to start.

I waited and waited. Grey skies — no great photos today I thought. Bored of waiting I wandered up and down the river looking for alternative locations and eventually headed back to the camera, still waiting patiently on its tripod. 10 minutes to sunrise. No light show; 5 minutes to sunrise. Still no light show; Sunrise. Still no light show. I decided to stick it out and, then, 5 minutes or so later, a few pinky red edges to the cloud-bank. Before I knew it the sky was red, the water was red, and I was thinking “bloody hell!”. Strangely the few dog walkers who had congregated in the area for their morning ritual seemed oblivious. I resisted the urge to go “snap happy” and concentrated on trying to get just a few “good-uns” and I have posted them, below:

I then ran up the estuary path to an alternative viewpoint, hoping to get a shot of the first rays hitting the reeds as the sun crested the ledge. Unfortunately the ebbing tide had receded by just a few inches too much and my photo included the mudflats rather than another reflection shot. Still – thats splitting hairs as I still like it and, come the next dawn high tide, I may just be back for more …

(As I got into my car to drive home, the car park ticket inspector turned up, true to form. Glad I got that ticket ….)

In a moment of madness, I glibly said to Helen, my wife, “why don’t I join his team and have a go?”. I’d never grown facial hair before, and I know that Helen hates it, so I thought my glibness would be skipped over and that I would remain clean shaven and have a normal November. “OK – why not?” came the reply. Never one to shirk a bet I took her at her word and stopped shaving, allowing 4 day’s stubble growth before daring to attempt sculpting a ‘tache. After a bit of mulling, during which I worried that if I grew a “straight” ‘tache I’d end up looking like George Roper or Ned Flanders, I settled on the “trucker” variant and, following a bout of razor artistry, I emerged from the bathroom looking like, well, a bit of an idiot I thought.

Things didn’t get off to a great start after, heading into town for our weekly shop, the butcher burst out laughing and proclaimed “that’s the funniest one so far!”. Great, I thought, 4 days in and people are taking the piss already. Over the next week as my upper lip became more insulated, I grew to quite like it and I have been stopped by various people who commented that I looked like:

• A German Porn Star
• A Mexican Porn Star
• Ali Bongo
• A Yorkie Trucker
• Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump (Don’t get this one myself — I think they were thinking of Ron Kovic in Born on the 4th of July)

(I was quite intrigued as to why the wearing of a moustache qualifies one to be compared to a porn star, and why foreign ones at that? Maybe I should do some thorough research of international porn to establish my best fit, and why the British are lacking )

Anyway, here I am at the end of the month. I have been hacked off by the itchiness, developed a bad habit of stroking it, worried on several times that it had become lopsided, become mildly depressed that there’s far too much white in it, and on occasion become quite attached to it. but it is going on Thursday and I’m looking forward to having a clean top lip again.

Its been a bit of fun really, but we shouldn’t forget the deadly serious reason behind it and that is to raise money for a very good cause. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, or have had a good laugh at my expense over the last month, please consider sponsoring me at http://mobro.co/BruceLittle and knowing that your money has gone to an excellent cause. And if you’ve already sponsored me, thank you very much.

To finish off, a couple of photos from the last month:

(and, yes, the title of this blog and the tags are a shameless attempt to attract people read it …)

Somewhat, but unavoidably, too late in the season I set off for Dartmoor to get some autumnal shots of the fast flowing shallow rivers. Having seen some excellent images by Mark Lakeman and Andy Cosway on Flickr of Hisley Bridge, my chosen destination was the river Bovey just outside Bovey Tracey on the edge of Dartmoor. I was quite interested in exploring this area as it was new to me.

We turned up at the car park and set off down the hill towards the river. It was only about a kilometre walk to the bridge but, with a three year old toddler in tow, it took about an hour to get there, having been distracted by such exciting diversions as ants, sticks, and muddy puddles on the way.

Arriving at my new photo location, I spent the next hour or so stood in the middle of this fast flowing shallow river which had a surprisingly strong current for its depth. I tried various compositions but found the bridge itself surprisingly hard to place in a photo so, after a while, I headed off downstream to get some compositions which didn’t feature the bridge itself. The light was dim which led to shutter speeds of several seconds and nice milky water. I’ve posted my favourite shots below.

I knew when it was time to go as I got a bit over confident and found the water coming over the top of my new wellies. The kilometre back to the car was spent with toddler (who had spent the last hour with mummy on the banks) on my shoulders so that soggy feet could be dealt with as quickly as possible. Next year I’ll be in the rivers of Dartmoor by mid-October at the latest and I’m looking forward to it already …

For some time I’d wanted to get a shot of the Esplanade and cliffs at Sidmouth at low tide just after sunrise. My theory being that the light would reflect off the sandstone cliffs giving a bright yellow/orange backdrop to the town. Trouble is that low tides at sunrise aren’t that low, so I knew I probably couldn’t get out to the breakwaters for some interesting rocky foreground. However, with a low tide and sunrise co-incident I ventured out to see what I could get.

The clouds were broken giving an interesting sky but a bank of cloud on the horizon would block the first light. I sat on the beach and waited for sunrise, spooking a woman in a nearby house who wandered out onto her patio in her dressing gown, obviously expecting to have her presumably hard-earned view to herself but finding that she was sharing it with a geeky bloke with camera and tripod (the view, that is, not the patio).

Sunrise eventually came and I waited and waited for the cliffs to light up. They didn’t. Feeling more and more hacked off, for whatever reason, I turned around and saw that all of the action was happening behind me and the cliffs towards Ladram Bay were aglow! Sprinting back across the beach, tripod in hand, I quickly composed a few shots to capture the moment and then calmed down. I spent the next 20 minutes enjoying some fantastic light and getting wet feet.

Ever the self-critic, I feel that I would’ve done better if I’d have turned up with the shots I got in mind and not a preconceived shot looking the other way. However, they ain’t bad, and I’ll save the view the other way for sunset at low tide.

And so it was that I found myself wandering along the banks of the Great Ouse, North of Cottenham, at just gone 7 o’clock one morning with no idea what I’d find and thinking that I’d missed the best bits of the dawn. My first dilemma was to choose left or right after I parked the car. I chose left and wandered off away from the rising sun. I was drawn by the mauve/pink tones in the sky that often occur just before sunrise or after sunset. Just around the corner I found a tree on the far bank that composed nicely against some grasses on the near bank which were reflected in the mirror-smooth water. I set the tripod up and rattled off a few shots. The composition didn’t really work in 3×2 but I thought that a square crop might improve things:

As I was setting up to take this photo my tripod fell over. Recovering from the shock that my expensive and trusty camera gear had narrowly missed a watery end I found that two of the tripod leg clamps had broken. How this had happened I don’t know but it made me a little grumpy — although the whole assembly would still just about about stay up if I was gentle with it. Packing up I headed across the road, back past the car, and into the sunrise. Over the fields I could see a farm surrounded by outbuildings and trees with the sun rising just over it. It was too bright to take a shot and I cursed my decision that I had not been there 10 minutes earlier to get the first of the sun’s rays through the mist. So, having found a spot with potential, I thought of the following day, packed up, and wandered back to the car, spooking a fox trotting happily along the river bank on the way.

Next day I came back for more of the same. The weather was similar but the fog slightly thicker. I headed straight for the spot I’d found the previous day and waited for my image. It never really came — because of the thicker fog — and the exact same atmosphere just didn’t happen. I got a fair few shots which I might still play with, but nothing to write home about. The best thing about that morning was just being there. It was pretty near silent apart from the distant hum of the A10, and the rather spooky and noisily abrupt evacuation of the trees by roosting birds as I walked past. I even got to see my friend the fox again, trotting along in the same place — probably assuming that the idiot with the tripod wouldn’t be there two days running.

Despite the small photographic return on my investment of getting up early, this particular morning made me realise that I should spend more time enjoying the atmosphere of the locations I get to, rather than scurrying about like the proverbial blue-arsed fly trying to get a winning image. After all, the images I’m after are supposed to convey serenity and atmosphere — what would be the point if I don’t get to feel that first hand?

Studying my tide time, map, and sunrise related smartphone apps, I had a few options – Lyme Regis, the Otter Estuary, and Sidmouth were all possibilities. With a settled spell of high pressure, there was a lot of “gunk” in the lower atmosphere which should have provided a “warm” sunrise. However, with interesting cloudy skies unlikely, I thought that maybe going West of the Exe, where fog had been forecast, would be a better option. Getting up to Mamhead viewpoint and looking down onto a foggy valley sounded promising.

Leaving the house early and re-acquainting myself with Richard Allinson’s graveyard shift show on Radio 2, I headed towards Exeter. Twenty minutes later I turned off the A380 and headed for Mamhead. I noticed that there was some interesting cloud in the sky which, in the pre-dawn light, was too tempting to ignore so I turned around and headed down to Teignmouth for a crack at the pier.

My intention was to shoot into the sunrise with the pier in silhouette, but when I got to sea level the fog was coming in and I thought I’d wasted my journey. Disappointed, I set up my tripod on the beach and thought I’d wait and see what happened anyway. My patience (or desperation?) was rewarded because the fog lifted a little and I was treated to a rather good sunrise. In this shot the end of the pier is disappearing into the mist and, shortly after it was taken, the mist became a bit too thick and I returned up into the hills again to Mamhead for a few bonus shots looking down onto the fog.

The following shot was taken having returned to Mamhead viewpoint after sunrise – my first visit and probably not my last:

I have seen plenty of eye-catching shots of this place, and have previously captured distant shots of it, where it forms a point of interest in a larger panorama, but I want a shot of it as the focal point of the whole image, so off I set at 05:30 on Saturday morning to have a pop. I arrived a good 45 minutes before sunrise to my chosen parking spot, and headed off in pursuit of a good viewpoint. After a bit of faffage, I climbed the adjacent Quarry Hill, but the view from the top was not what I wanted, looking down onto Colmers Hill instead of having the summit trees breaking the skyline. So I descended and found a spot half way down which showed promise. The tripod was set up and I waited; the sky looked good with broken cloud suggesting a decent view for sunrise. However, as I sat and waited, so the cloud built up such that, well before sunrise, I was sitting under an overcast sky which was neither red, nor would have allowed the sun’s rays to penetrate to illuminate the scene before me. Realising that this was not to be my day, I chose just to enjoy the quietness and freshness of a September morning in a part of the world that I am lucky to live in. Eventually I got up and headed home for bagels and fresh coffee for breakfast.

Having not got the weekend photographic bug out of my system I checked the weather forecast and raised my hopes for Sunday evening. I had my eye on Woodbury Common in East Devon as I have been there plenty of times before but, oddly, never at sunset when the low golden light would light up the scene of heather, (what remained of the) gorse, and pine trees to produce a vista to excite us landscape photographers.

However, just as I got there, a big bank of cloud to the West blocked the sun, and I sat there waiting and waiting for, well, nothing as it turns out. So, time to turn tail and head home for the casserole I’d put in the oven before leaving, and a consolatory glass (or two) of red wine.

I exposed one shot all weekend – a recce shot at Colmers Hill. I didn’t bother at Woodbury. I could just sit here and mope, pissed off that I didn’t get any more photos to show off to the world (or the few people who follow this blog and my Flickr stream anyway). But what’s the point in that? Nothing ventured, nothing gained – next week I will be out again, weather forecast permitting. I am determined to get some good material over the coming months.