Scaleber Force | autumnal veil

October 26th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Took an impromptu trip to one of my favourite locations last weekend to try and catch some autumn colors.

The extremely mild October has stalled the peak color by a few weeks, could be mid-November this year unless we get a cold snap — but there were a few red flecks of leaves around the moss carpeted boulders to contrast the verdant greens.

autumnal veil | yorkshire

autumnal veil | yorkshire

With each trip I’ve seen a different side to the falls (this would be my 4th), and each time I’ve found more potential in the location

This trips the first time the falls flow and wind direction in the gorge have both been low enough to allow me this close to the falls.

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Coombe ledges

October 1st, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink

Another exposure from Cornwall’s Coombe Valley.

This particular stretch of beach is littered with long fingers of rock, that at certain times of the year, angle themselves directly into the sunset making for cracking foreground fodder.

Coombe ledges | Coombe Valley, Cornwall

Coombe ledges | Coombe Valley, Cornwall

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Quarried cove

September 29th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

After a long walk down the South West Coastal path, came across this cliff face, riddles with pock marks of slate mining.

The cliff here has been weathered as much by the hand of man as the Atlantic. The huge pillar of rock in the upper left of the frame a man-made feature, left over from the days of the Cornish slate trade.

Quarried cove | Cornwall

Quarried cove | Cornwall

It was an overcast day, and usually i keep these days for location research, but the muted light, the gun metal colour of the rock coated in the morning’s rain and the way the foreground rocks mirroring the jagged lines of the cove below kept me there for about an hour.

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Sunset on the Brissons

September 28th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

For about a year i’ve had this shot in mind thanks to some lost hours on the Photographer’s Ephemeris (a highly recommended for any shoot planning), and been thwarted twice in 2 years.

Sunset over the Brissons | Cot Valley, Cornwall

Sunset over the Brissons | Cot Valley, Cornwall

This time nature played ball.

Maybe it was luck, but as Arnold Palmer said “the more i practice, the luckier i get”.

Often the worst weather can offer the best light and on this night that held true. The quality light here in Cornwall is so unpredictable, it changes so rapidly, and when weather fronts blow in off the Atlantic, it can really deliver some amazing displays of tone, mood and colour.

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Atlantic Mist

September 27th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Taken on a wind battered, rainy day, it was a miracle i managed to get any shots that weren’t covered in sea spray or blurry — I was happy to retreat to the warmth of the B&B after this.

Atlantic Mist | Coombe Valley, Cornwall

Atlantic Mist | Coombe Valley, Cornwall

The light in Cornwall in Autumn is immense.

So changeable, and inclement. In the 15 mins before this exposure was made, the sky went from cloudless, to totally overcast, to broody, then finally as the sun set, the splinters of colour you see here sprang into view on the cloud’s edges.

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mossy creek sol duc creek

July 22nd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

En route to Sol Duc falls is a beautiful mossy boulder lined creek that extends up a steep cliff deep into the rainforest.

sol duc creek | Olympic National Park

sol duc creek | Olympic National Park

It offers far more photogenic potential than the actual falls.

The creek tumbles steeply down the forests side, through endless micro falls, channelled round moss green boulders, fallen decaying trees and around the carpeted rocks.

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© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

Hoh Rainforest the handmaidens tale

July 1st, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

One of my favourite features in the Hoh rainforest were the ‘nurse logs’

As the giant firs die off, their stumps and shell like carcasses provide falling seedlings with a much needed fertile base and support to grow. They effectively become a giant growbag.

the handmaidens tale | hoh rainforest

Seedlings often take root inside the fir’s skeleton, free from the intense competition on the dense moss carpet of the rainforest, and they utilise the decaying treetrunk like mulch. The fir in death, gives the saplings a chance at life. Nice and circle of life-ish.

Ambling around the Hoh Rainforest, I came across this small sapling growing out of a giant long dead fir stump — it’s hard to tell scale here, but the stump is little over 12ft high. For me, it came to epitomise the cycle of life and death in the rainforest.

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© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

Hoh Rainforest (or welcome to Endor)

July 1st, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Everywhere and everything in the Hoh rainforest is carpeted in some form or other of plantlife. Floor, trees, the forest canopy are all covered and pregnant with life and plant-on-plant action.

fangorn forest | hoh rainforest

Plants even live on other plants. You can’t even see the rainforest floor in some places, in fact in some sections you almost post-hole through the dense carpet of moss as you hike around.

It’s like Endor mated with the Fangorn Forest.

Every inch of the branches of the Douglas firs in this grove were dripping in clubmoss, as lichen and moss weaved their way across the trunks. The dead trunks in the foreground are key to the survvial of other plants, as they provide a bed for seeds to grow on — earning them the moniker ‘nursing logs’

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© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

< — geek note —- >

Endor was actually Redwood National Park, and not this particular slice of Olympic National park.

< — end transmission — >

treebeard hoh rainforest

June 28th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

This maple tree in the Hoh Rainforest is more moss than tree.

Thick beards of the stuff (called club moss) hang in long tails off every inch of the tree’s trunk, I couldn’t help but think of the Ents in the Lord Of the Rings for some reason.

treebeard | olympic national park

treebeard | olympic national park

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© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

Bandon beach at sunset

June 24th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

I wanted to avoid the ‘cookie cutter’ compositions that always seem to feature the Wizards Hat the South end of Bandon, whilst still capturing the litter of sea stacks at sunset.

2 days of mooching around the beach and I hadn’t ‘seen’ any compostions, just plenty of tide pools ;)

fire in the sky| Bandon

Then I started to think around the small boulders and rocks on the tideline with the more ‘youthful’ stacks still out to sea. These nubs remnants of what I imagine to have been giant stacks and boulders at one time, the view across the oceon like looking through layers of geological time.

A big bank of clouds blocked the sun right until the final moment before the sun sank, when a burst of color lit up the sky like fire. Some careful incamera filtering allowed me to ramp up the reds providing a nice color contrast to the ice cool of the recedding tide at the bottom of the frame.

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© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

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