November: month in review
Each month I aim to pick an image that, in my mind at least, captures the flavour of that month. It might not be the best image from the month, or the most spectacular of subjects; it just needs to illustrate something about the month. The value for me is in the writing - it’s a tool for review and reflection. If you enjoy the words and picture, that’s a bonus!
Godrevy Lighthouse Just Before Dawn
Fujifilm X-T3 | 21mm f/11 1.3s ISO 320
What’s this month’s image? It’s Godrevy Lighthouse on the West Cornish coast shortly before dawn.
Did you do anything to it? There were a couple of aspects of this that were quite tricky and, frankly, it took a little trial and error. The light level was quite low and between the moon and the rocks there’s a big rage of tones. By default (even using a neutral profile) Adobe applies a pretty aggressive tone curve that pushes up the highlights. You can, with a little bit of digging on the internet, create a very flat, neutral profile that allows you to handle these quite well, but it’s a faff. The profile leaves the image very desaturated, however, so this has to be corrected using some selective tone curve and saturation adjustments.
At capture I’ve had to push the ISO slightly above base on this image. The reason for doing this is that it was the only parameter I could move. The aperture, as f/11, was the widest I could go without either the foreground or background losing focus. Similarly, I wanted to retain detail in the waves while keeping a sense of movement. The sea was quite fast moving and a little experimentation suggested that just shy of 1.5 seconds was ideal for the effect I was trying to get. At these settings, and at base ISO of 160, the image was still a little dark, so I’ve increased sensitivity by about a stop to get a better base exposure.
Aside from all that, the finishing touches involved a little selective dodging and burning around the lighthouse and the moon. I’m quite pleased with the result - it may even end up being one of my favourites from a busy year.
What’s it doing here? I was at Godrevy as part of a two day workshop with the well known photographer and author Lee Frost. I’d not met Lee before, but like many I was aware of his work from books and magazine contributions stretching back very many years. He’s a lovely chap and if you have the opportunity to spend some time with him I’d thoroughly recommend the experience.
The reasons for my presence at in Cornwall at the start of November were, however, slightly less well thought out. We’d had a talk at the club which mentioned Lee and over the following weekend I’d browsed the workshops on his website. The event that first caught my eye was the infrared workshop at in May (see August’s post for more on my interest in infrared), but I also spotted that there were places on the West Cornwall workshop in early November. Which I booked. Without really checking how I’d actually get to Penzance.
It turns out that it’s probably the place that is furthest away from my house that still has a Tesco. Two days to get there, two days to get back for a two day workshop. If I’d have taken the time to work all that out before I booked I’d have probably not bothered. As it is, I’m extremely glad I did. I’ve not been to Cornwall for the best part of thirty years and had forgotten the ruggedness, beauty and wildness of the place. I will be back, if only to revisit some of the sites below.
Have you been up to much else? Another place that we’ll be going back to is Brighton. It’s been even longer since I’ve been in Brighton - probably over forty years - and I don’t think that Helen has ever visited. We were both very impressed. As I’ve remarked elsewhere the city, much like myself, is a bit shabby, rough around the edges and has seen better days, but the place has a lovely vibe and there’s plenty to see and do. There’s even more if you get out of the city, and we’ll aim to explore a little further afield next time we’re down there.
We were fortunate with the weather (or at least it was far, far better than the cold, wind and pishing rain we’ve had up here for months) and were happily wandering around without coats (unheard of up here in November). It’s also a surprisingly accessible place from Glasgow - EasyJet flight down to Gatwick and twenty five minutes on the Gatwick Express into the centre of the city. Another one that will be on the list to revisit sooner rather than later.
Coming Up
December brings Christmas, the season of joy, goodwill and complaining about the ceaseless bloody Christmas music. We’ve also a couple of days in Belfast booked, possibly with a family twist.
