It’s been a little while since I last posted, which in large part has been down to various bugs and viruses passing around the household, but I wanted to talk about a trip to a nearby beach, Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire, where I spent the day fine tuning some of my landscape photography skills.
It’s only a few miles down the road from where I live, and it’s a beach like no other I’ve been to.
It’s quite literally split in half, with a large assortment of rocks separating the sandy, tourist-filled traditional beach, and the more rugged, wild side on the left which is scattered with rock pools, eroded cliff faces and an array of different kinds of rocks and patterns. The left side is where I wandered off to on one Saturday afternoon.
I set out with a focus, which I think is important to improve as a landscape photographer, and my goal was to find a triptych of pictures which worked together based around these patterns.
On my way down a less than convincing walkway, i spotted a beautiful smooth blue stone which had been lovingly placed on some rather well weathered red rocks. Now where I found it I couldn’t see a composition, so I shoved it into my bag and took it with me, as I felt it was too good to leave behind.
Another 50 metres of so along the rock pools, I spotted this amazing pinkish red stone, smooth and flat, and has this fantastic washed out purple patterning on it. The colour of the stone with the rounded pebble I found earlier just worked really well together. The lighting was a little harsh and brought out a rather unavoidable shadowing, but on a day with very little cloud across the sun I knew that this was probably the best I was going to get that day.
I was confident this would make a great first picture, and so set about finding photo number two.
After a stop off to nose around some of the rocks which has this wonderful, vivid green seaweed, I found another pink coloured stone which this time had what seemed to be a sort of white granite running throughout it (I’m no geologist, so if I have it wrong please message me as I’d love to know). The tonal range was similar to the first one, and it just felt like it would be a great image to bookend whatever was going to be central focal point in the triptych.
I searched high and low for another image which would sit well between the two photos I’d taken, and there were a couple of contenders, including a greeny grey rock covered in a sort of moss, but the colours just didn’t work as part of the series and I just wasn’t feeling inspired by it.
Fortunately, I walked around the corner of a cliff face which has recently slid in the rain and saw three large stones, all with a white stripe running through them laid together. The chance of these being there naturally are very slim, and I’m pretty sure it was some children playing around who had placed them there, but it gave me the perfect idea for my centerpiece. Having laid my gear to one side, I rummaged around the fallen rocks to find others which had the stripes through them, and found enough with big enough veins to be able to create a circular pattern.
The bare ground in the middle didn’t feel like it was bringing a cohesion to the picture and another with the striping pattern took away from those on the outside.
After some further searching, I found what looked like an almost volcanic stone, about the size of my hand which added a new texture to it. Setting the tripod up high above and shooting down, I was really happy with the images I’d captured that day, and in good timing too because the waves were starting to make their way back up to the cliff face.
I’ve included the images below for in the sequence.
I’m really happy with how the images have come out and I think the 1:1 crop for each one really helps to highlight the patterns within the images.
This has my first attempt at a creating a triptych, and whilst it would have been nice to have three organic images to use, I feel like when an opportunity presents itself to create a photograph you should 100% take it, as it’s your artistic vision and I feel like having a story to go along with it really helps to give meaning to the image. There were lots of options but I don’t think any were as strong as the two choreographed pieces.
I’d love to hear what you think of these group of photos, so you can head over to instagram.com/nate.warlow where you can drop a comment and give me any feedback you think and I’d love to hear all of it as it will all help me to improve.
I appreciate you taking the time to read through as usual, and I hope you all have a fab week.