Good Hope

Good Hope, Skipool Creek, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

As a boat owner I am often dismayed by the number of vessels that are left to rot in boatyards, marinas, and on moorings. They can be seen all round the coast, and in many parts of the inland waterways. Once loved and cared for they have either outstripped someone's ability to maintain them or fallen on hard times through accident, gear failure or just old age. For some reason which is not entirely clear to me, I find this all a bit hard to take. Even though I have spent my adult life trying not to be a bizzom (though I have also spent much of it trying to find a use for the word 'bizzom') I can't help but find against the owners of these boats in the portable personal tribunal that I carry around with me. Why buy them if you don't want to look after them? Why not sell them if you're fed up with them? Preferably before its too late.
However, as a photographer I am eternally grateful to the same people. By all means, leave them to rot. Somewhere close to a car park and well above the high water mark would be best, but anywhere will do.
As long as the paint peels artistically and the wood springs apart in an attractive geometric pattern.
Much obliged. Don't know what I would do for foreground interest without you.

Riverdance

Riverdance, on Cleveleys Beach, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

This rather sparse frame, shot yesterday on Cleveleys beach, is the product of more than one set of parameters.
Frankly, I would have preferred to have been a little closer the the upturned ferry 'Riverdance', but the beach around the ship has been cordoned off and is patrolled by yellow jacketed security guards. So, after the complete failure of my best polite smile and 'Would it be possible to...?' I was compelled to shoot from afar.
However, the emptiness of the beach (apart from the rope that marked the cordoned off area) gave me the opportunity to try out my magazine cover shot technique.
Surprisingly little space is left on most magazine covers after the masthead and coverlines have been added and I have a feeling that the usual rule of thirds and foreground interest principles either don't apply, or if they do, they work in a different way.
Having been invited to submit a selection of shots to Lancashire Life as a result of my feature 'Bay Watch' in this months issue, I am now trying to see my viewfinder with the top fifth and bottom left quarter covered with text.
And its not as easy as I thought.

Morecambe Bay Nobbies

Morecambe Slipway, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Nobbies are Morecambe Bay shrimp boats, some of which were built by Crossfields boatyard in Arnside. These two are moored off the Lifeboat slipway in Morecambe and I could have walked out to them if I had been wearing boots and if I had been able to overcome my natural reluctance to wander around the sands of Morecambe Bay at low tide. So instead I photographed them from afar and included the jetty, hopefully leading the eye towards them.
Earlier this afternoon I was at Glasson Dock trying out a graduated ND filter. I took a number of landscape format shots then some portrait formats. However, I forgot to turn the filter, so I now have a fine selection of photographs of Glasson Dock in which the left half of the shot is one stop under exposed.
I might be fairly useless with filters, but at least I'm not called a 'Nobby'.
Not often anyway.

High Water Springs

Kent Estuary from Ashmeadow, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

An unusually high tide in Arnside this afternoon, combined with a cloudy sky and bright sunshine made for some of the best conditions for photography so far this year. So I am not sure why I was able to take 62 of the most ordinary, lifeless, dull, boring and unispired photographs I have ever shot.
This one is probably the pick of the bunch, or it might be the photograph I took of the footbridge in Arnside Station, for a reason that now escapes me. But neither of them, nor any of the other 60 had any merit at all.
It's not that I think I'm so good that I should be able to take worthwhile photographs every day. On the contrary, I am often surprised by the quality that some of my photographs seem to achieve despite my lack of ability. But the conditions today were so good, and my output was so not good that I am inclined to think that I may be having a mid life crisis.
I'll be changing my Land Rover for a cabriolet and using skin care products next.

A Lot of Rocks and a Lighthouse

Lune Estuary, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

I was contacted this week by a resident of Sunderland Point to tell me that some of my captions on Flickr were innaccurate. He pointed out that (amongst other errors) I had referred to a boat as a 'trawler' when it was, in fact, an ex-pleasure boat, and that I had called a building a 'Pilot's Cottage' when it had been used as an Inn.
He also gave me the benefit of some of his intimate knowledge of the personalities and families that lived and worked in the area. His comments were both fascinating, and a reminder of how a few words under a photograph can either inform or misinform, and add to or subtract from, the meaning of it.
All of which has shaken my confidence about captioning photographs to the extent that I am now going to confine myself to stating facts that I can prove beyond reasonable doubt.
Hence the caption above.
They may well, technically, be stones rather than rocks, but I am hoping to be allowed a little leeway.

Islands in the Sun

The Islands of Fleet in Wigtown Bay, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Half term provided me with the opportunity to spend a few days in Scotland with a Land Rover full of photographic gear. Well, maybe not full exactly. That would be a lot more gear than I could realistically use in any constructive way.
In reality most of my gear stays in my bag most of the time anyway and when I am scrambling around on slippery seaweed covered rocks taking photos I tend to confine myself to just my S2 and lens, and a Manfrotto monopod. If I feel the need to take brackets of exposures for future processing in Photomatix (like this one) I have to take a proper tripod, but that means lugging around a three ton Velbon that is made out of scaffold poles.
To achieve this photo of The Islands of Fleet I had to clamber over the rocks, running the risk of slipping on the wet seaweed, spearing myself on the jagged rocks and more importantly, smashing my uninsured camera, my uninsured lens and my brand new (and uninsured) circular polarising filter in to a thousand sparkly pieces, all while carrying a tripod that weighs almost as much as... a small island in Wigtown Bay.
And I loved every minute.

Flood Tide

Arnside Railway Viaduct, flood tide, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Ambled down to the seafront today to take a few photos, hoping to make use of the surprisingly sunny morning that had dawned after a week of rain and high winds. As I parked on the promenade it was clear that the tide was about to arrive. I know that in most seaside towns the tide 'comes in' or flows' but in Arnside it Arrives. The stone jetty was occupied by fishermen and a group of canoeists were hovering about in the middle of the estuary.
The bore, when it came past, was only a few inches high, and barely rocked the canoes, but as I walked towards the railway embankment a roar like the sound of a BAC 1-11 taking off (sorry, ex-anorak aircraft spotter reference to an obsolete and very noisy jet aircraft) began to echo around the sea front. The water rushing upriver past the railway viaduct was increasing in volume and creating bow waves on each pillar as if the bridge was ploughing downstream at full throttle.
By the time I had walked past the Fighting Cocks, the usual Arnside seafront landscape of undulating and rippled sand had been replaced by ten feet of swirling murky water.
The roar from the viaduct continued undiminished long enough for me to photograph the entire seafront from the viaduct to Ashmeadow.
The power of the tide in the Bay and particularly in Arnside is either a curse or a blessing depending on your point of view. The spectacle of the bore may attract onlookers and the odd canoeist to the village, but the rush of water and the range between the high and low water marks seems to almost completely preclude the possibility of pleasure boating in the area.
If Arnside was on the Isle of Wight there would be yachts moored four or five deep off the foreshore, boatyards, chandlers and sailmakers would cram every building and alleyway close to the water and the pubs and restaurants would be thronged with people wearing reflective wellingtons and South Atlantic proof trousers.
Sailing heaven or yachtie hell?
Unless SLDC decide to build a barrage across the Bay from Grange to Heysham, we may never know.

A Cold Sunday in The Lakes

Windermere 1, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Taken on probably the coldest, most miserable and dullest day I have ever been out with my camera. Having hardly taken a single frame since Christmas however, I was determined, despite the weather, to capture something so I could enjoy a little bit of CS2 time this evening. I suppose the whole concept of 'enjoying a little bit of CS2 time' is one that will only have a limited appeal to a few people but when the only other choices are Ski Sunday or doing some lesson prep. I'll take Photoshop every time.
Actually, I was so stuck for worthwhile activity that I processed this from the RAW file in three different ways, using CS2, Photomatix and the Finepix convertor that came with my S2. This is the CS2 version, which had more depth and range of tone and had a better 'surface finish'.
Its a pretty ordinary photograph really, and I make no pretence that it is special in any way other than that I suffered for it.
I might not have lived in a rat infested garret and cut off my ears to keep warm, but my hands got jolly cold and I had to turn up the heater in the car all the way home.

Still in Arnside

Arnside, Stone Jetty Bench, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Freezing action in a single frame is usually achieved by setting the shooting menu to shutter priority and using as fast a shutter speed as the available light and the lens will allow. However, when I take bracketed shots for later processing as an HDR there is the possibility that movement may be recorded across the three (or occasionally five) frames required despite being frozen in each individual picture. The reflection under the silver birch in the post below this is an example.
This is a particular difficulty around water, and since many if not most of my photographs have water in them, is a particular difficulty for me. Or to be more exact, for my copy of Photomatix. There is a menu which includes an option for 'Attempt to Reduce Ghosting Artefacts', but there is a price to be paid for selecting this. To be honest I'm not really sure why, but it reduces the overall quality of the image and changes the tonal range.
The photograph above has no such issues however. The water is millpond still, there are no people walking through the frame, no cars driving along the promenade and no trees waving in the breeze. Even the two men talking outside the chemist kept obligingly still. So all three frames are monozygotically identical.
Except for a single seagull, which was photographed three times in different parts of the frame, thereby giving the impression of three seagulls flying over the promenade on Saturday morning when there was only one.
So I am identifying the other two as false readings.
I think it might be best to declare every contribution at the outset, rather than have to blame poor accounting later on.

High Water

Ullswater 4, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Ullswater.
Not quite within the Morecambe Bay area, but if the water in the lake rises much more it may well join up with Windermere and form a new sea loch with its entrance near Grange. In some ways an appealing idea, but with Arnside Knott a small isolated island and the nearest harbour halfway up Ingleborough, one that is likely to be more popular with boatbuilders than landowners.
I don't know if climate change is responsible for the water level in the lake, but I am old and cynical enough to think that giving up my Land Rover for a Toyota Prius isn't going to do much to resolve the issue of global warming. Is it an unavoidable historical cycle or did my participation in an irresponsible societal attitude towards emissions bring it about?
In any event, is it as pressing as the problems of Aids, the easy availability of weapons, creating sustainable economic growth, and providing a clean water supply.

In Basingstoke as well as Burundi.

The photo above, shot on an environmentally friendly Fuji S2 pro, using a recycled memory card, was three RAW images, processed in Photomatix. The three reflections under the silver birch were more than the software could reasonably be expected to resolve into one, but it would have helped if the (rechargeable) batteries in my camera hadn't chosen to fail just as the sun came out on an otherwise dull day.

I had a spare set, but by the time they were in place, the moment, as they say in Kyoto, had passed.

Still Waters

Arnside, Kent Estuary, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

After driving to Warrington to buy some frames today, I returned to Arnside just as the sun was dipping below the trees in the grounds of Ashmeadow. I took a few bracketed shots along the foreshore, hoping that I could capture the way the light was glowing off the water, and the streaked clouds blowing in from the Irish Sea.
When my need for central heating outweighed my desire to take photos I returned home and processed them in Photomatix, using the 'shade' setting in white balance as well as the 'Ghosting Artefacts Reduction'. I find tonemapping is easier in version 2.5.4, which I downloaded last week. I use a strength of around 70, and saturation a little higher at 75. The tone, colour, and micro smoothing and contrast settings depend on the exact nature of the shot, but I often find that in low light shots I have to use more highlight and shadow smoothing than I would like to avoid noise in dark areas. The 'high' or 'very high' settings for light smoothing suit my subjects, and the images that come from my S2 pro, more than the lower levels which seem to create too much of a halo effect.
I then opened the image in Photoshop CS2 and used 'Transform / Distort' to pull out the top corners a little, as my Tokina 12-24 (at 12mm) had created some distortion at the edges.
Finally I tidied it up and sharpened in Digital Image Pro.
I was quite pleased with the final result of all this fumbling around, though I daresay any expert in HDR or Photoshop would scoff at my efforts.
Still, I'd rather practice being a mediocre photographer than spend another minute in IKEA.

Storm warning, seems like a heavy rain...

Arnside storm, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

...sang Bonnie Raitt in the only country and western song ever to have invoked any emotion whatsoever in me. The lyrics came back to me this week in Arnside as yet another flock of black, rain laden clouds swept over the town from the West.
I took this picture last year, before I discovered the delights of Photomatix and HDR, and in an effort to make the clouds more pronounced, I spent ages cutting the photograph in half along the line of the rooftops, and then increasing the contrast in the top half, and lightening the buildings in the lower half. At the time I thought this was a pretty cool way of achieving a differential exposure of the image, and that it made Arnside look like a small town in Transylvania.
On reflection, it was more like using scissors and glue to make a collage for my Dracula project at primary school.

Low tide, Arnside

Two buoys at low tide, Arnside, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

These mooring buoys, used by yachts in the summer, are attached to 'sinkers' made from concrete filled car wheels, which embed themselves in the sand, and become completely immovable after two or three passes of the tide.
As a highly effective and decidedly low tech solution to the problem of anchoring a yacht permanently, enabling it to ride out the wildest storms and the highest tides, this appeals to my Luddite instincts enormously. Despite making my living in IT, and having little fear of computers, applications or operating systems (except DNS), I have always admired the utilitarian and the functional. My million pound dream garage even includes a series one Land Rover and a Willy's Jeep.
In fact, I think that the Technology Resistance Movement at work probably have a point when they tell me that the world would be a better place without computers, that the IT industry deliberately sets out to make itself inaccessible and that people who work with computers should get out more (and not waste their time filling imaginary garages).
So, even though I am upgrading my computer this week so I can use Photoshop without making the lights go dim, I still harbour a wish that I worked as a lamplighter or a wheeltapper, and that the tools of my trade lasted a lifetime rather than being rendered obsolete by a new version of Windows.

A Matter of Time

CD Cover 1, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

James is a friend and colleague, who recently asked me to photograph him for the cover of his new CD. He is unsigned at present, but we may have to face the possibility of losing him to the music industry if he achieves the recognition he deserves in the future. His music can be heard at www.myspace.com/jamesgormanmusic
I felt that the cove near Silverdale where I photographed the rocks a couple of months ago might provide a good location, but I am a long way outside my comfort zone when it comes to photographing people, so I wasn't too sure if the outcome would hit the mark.
I shot this with my S2 pro and the Tokina 11-24 with a Nikon SB 28 flash on a tripod as a single exposure, and processed it in Fineview, Photomatix, Photoshop CS2 and Digital Image Pro. (I have to say that the impressive range of software is not the result of my competence, but the fact that I can only do certain things with certain programs).
I was quite pleasantly surprised with this one, and I felt that the glimpse of the Bay behind gave it an appropriately barren feel.
Perhaps I should consider a career change.
Yeah, right.

The Posh Sardine, Arnside.

The Posh Sardine, Arnside, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

This rather Dickensian scene was taken in Arnside this week as a record of the Christmas window display for the owners. It also served to remind me that the festive season is rapidly approaching. I know I should be starting to think about writing cards, buying presents and ordering the turkey, but I am still doing my level best to pretend that it is still summer.
To be honest, it's becoming a bit of an uphill struggle, but I am determined to carry on taking photographs despite the present cold and rainy spell.
I should be good at it by now, I had plenty of practice in August...

The Shifting Sands

Low Tide in Arnside, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

The silt that shifts around in the Bay with the ebb and flow of every tide is largely alluvium left from the glacial erosion of the Lakeland Hills. The artist Turner, who visited the area on his tours in 1816 and 1825, observed to his companions as he crossed the sands 'Look at Morecambe Bay when the tide is out and you are looking at the mountains and hills brought low'.
One of my small pleasures in life is watching the channel of the River Kent change course after every tide on my way to work, but I am at a loss as to why a similar channel in the Thames Estuary that runs past the cockle sheds in Leigh on sea has never changed in the forty five years I have known it.
It is probably to do with the power of the tidal flow in the Bay and the nature of the sand that shapes it.
A research grant and a five year longitudinal study should sort it out.

Arnside Sunset

Arnside Sunset, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Back from a couple of days 'darn sarf' in Essex, it feels like I have been away for a month for some reason. As a child I was brought up in Leigh on sea, and spent most of my formative years either looking at the Thames Estuary or sailing around it in a Mirror Dinghy. When I go back to visit, so much has changed that it is easy to lose sight of the things that remain the same. The cockle boats have got bigger, and the car parks are more expensive, but the sea wall still shakes when a train goes past on its way up to Fenchurch Street, the pubs are still full of old, bearded blokes in cordurouy caps and canvas smocks who talk about each other and complain about the landlord and the tide still goes out so far that the pier in neighbouring Southend had to be built over a mile and a quarter long.
Coming back to Arnside has reminded me why I moved up north in my twenties (and again in my forties). The tide goes out in Morecambe Bay too, trains clatter across the viaduct in Arnside, and the village fills up with earnest people in stout boots and cagoules throughout the summer, but there is an unpretentious sincerity and a wholesome charm about this area that seems to have gone missing from the Essex coast.

And the sunsets are better.

Arnside Stone Jetty.

Stone Jetty, Arnside, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

This stone pier replaced an earlier wooden structure, and facilitated the unloading of ships at Arnside after the constructon of the railways viaduct had caused the estuary to silt up, thereby preventing passage to Milnthorpe. It was constructed by the Ulverstone and Lancaster Railway Company, but later bought for the town for the sum of £100.
It now provides a place for anglers, an outstanding view of the estuary and town, and is a popular venue for visitors on a summer Sunday afternoon.
Sitting on a bench at the end of the jetty watching the sun set over the Kent Estuary is a truly uplifting experience, and many a less than pleasant day at work has been turned into a relaxed evening just by stopping here for ten minutes on my way home.

Silverdale Cove

Silverdale Cove, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Stopped as I passed this cove at Silverdale again tonight on my way to the gym so I could try out my new Tokina 12-24 lens. I have been using a Nikon 18-70 for a while now, and found it an excellent item. Sharp, fast enough and versatile, and it seems to suit the Fuji S2 very well. However, I have often hankered after a wider angle, and weighed up the Sigma 10-20, the Tokina and the Tamron 11-17. I finally settled on the Tokina on the basis that it was built like a tank compared to the other two, and the DP review mentioned better contrast and very little CA. I shall have to see if it gives me what I was expecting, but early impressions tell me it is sharp at f8, fast focussing and is accurate.
I may, for once, have made a good choice first time.

Vita Nova, Roa Island

Vita Nova, Roa Island, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Back to Roa Island this afternoon to shoot the trawler Vita Nova again. She was sideways on to the causeway today, presumably having been moved by a high tide, which gave me a chance to see the lettering on her stern that appeared to spell out 'New Brunswick'. This would go a long way toward explaining why I could find no trace of a British trawler called Vita Nova last time I looked. The nearest I got was a Grimsby boat called Via Nova, but she was 185 feet long anyway, much bigger than this one. If Vita Nova came to the UK from Canada she would possibly have never been registered as a working fishing boat in the UK, but I am still at a loss as to why she arrived here. The rusty colours on her hull and superstructure are being gradually covered with red lead paint, which does nothing for her photographic appeal, but may serve to preserve her a little longer.