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Dorset Field Notes - Day 1

Getting Ready

We originally planned to set off from St Albans to Lulworth at around 6 am to avoid traffic. But as we finished ‘planning’ only at 1 am last night, we felt we don’t want to be too harsh on ourselves and settled on a start at 7 am. At the end we left at around 7:30 as it took me about 20 minutes to build a Starwars Lego toy for my son (one of those things you just can’t not do). While I was perfecting my Lego-building skills, Martin filled up that time with packing all his kit. Speaking about kit, this is what loaded our backpacks with:

Milan’s kit:

Martin’s kit:

From the above it is obvious that we are more than prepared for any imaginable photographic situation. As a result of having all that stuff Martin’s photo backpack weighs about 20 kilos, but he insists that it won’t be a problem to carry it while walking on slippery cliffs. Let’s see how that works out :-)

The journey

As expected, given that we left too late we hit the usual M25 traffic nightmare before and around Heathrow and it took us over an hour to join M3. Surprisingly, from then on all went really smoothly—M3 to M27 and then a number of local roads. As we were nearing our destination it was impossible not to notice several rather discouraging signs like “Five Tip Firing Point” and “Sudden Fire” designating that the area we are passing through is actively used by the army—see the pic below. Luckily, no sudden fire hit our car so I am happy to report that we safely reached Lulworth at around half eleven safe and unharmed. Finding our B&B was a piece of cake as it is at the very end of the road leading towards the cove. I guess if we went a bit further, we would have ended up in the cove itself.

First exploration

After checking-in and dropping our luggage and kit to our ‘Superior Family Suite with a splendid see view’, or at least that’s how it was advertised on their web site, we have decided to go for a short ‘site exploration’ to see what this area actually has to offer. Cold drizzle and strong wind have been with us since we left London this morning and unfortunately this hasn’t changed. In fact, it got even worse—heavy rain and fog was what we found here. Nevertheless, eagerness, determination and motivation kept us going, despite the misery.

The first obvious choice was to check out the nearby cove. As we were approaching the shore, we spotted two heavily geared-up female photography ‘enthusiasts’. And by heavily geared-up I mean two DSLRs each, number of lenses and full backpacks. Suddenly, our clearly excessive equipment didn’t seem to be such an overkill anymore;-)

The cove itself is indeed impressive. We immediately started looking for the best spots and angles. Within just a few minutes we were able to find a number of great places that we both found really interesting. We took out the small NEX–7 and made a few sample shots before deciding to climb up the cliff to explore the other side of the cove. This proved to be a rather dangerous idea given the shoes we were both wearing and the incredibly slippery clay slopes. Having said that, under these conditions no shoes would actually be able to cope! For health and safety reasons, walking along the designated paths is indeed highly recommended. This, however, would hardly allow us to discover the real photographic potential of this beautiful area so we just ‘had’ to jump over the fence every now and then.

As the rain strengthened and because we were already wet and hungry, we decided to head back to the ‘base’ to have a small lunch. Two burgers, a pint of Amstel and a pint of local ale did the job and we set off again. This time though, we took the car and headed to slightly more remote locations—Durdle Door and Lulworth Castle. When we reached Durdle Door it was obvious that there is nothing to be seen today due to a very thick fog. So we left straight away for the castle. After a few missed turns (don’t blindly trust the sat-nav!), we finally got there.

Normally a car park that is about half a mile away from the castle wouldn’t be a problem had it not started to rain even more heavily. And having only one half-broken umbrella didn’t help either. By the time we finally entered the castle we were both soaking wet. After a short tour and a couple of pictures, we headed back to Lulworth Cove Inn to get dry. What a first day! We couldn’t wish for a better weather, could we? ;-)

Tanks        Lulworth Castle        Coast

Plan for tomorrow

The weather forecast for the next three days looks promising. Tomorrow we plan to start early to get the best lighting conditions. The sun raises at 5:26 so the plan is to be on the first location at around six and be back for our breakfast around ninenish. In the morning we want to shoot Durdle Door, St. Oswald’s Bay and Stair Hole and later in the day we will probably go back to Lulworth Cove itself and explore its many different faces.

Dorset Field Notes—Day 2 will be published tomorrow evening so stay tuned!

Milan & Martin

❧

Dorset photo trip

Tomorrow is the day. Me and Martin will set off to our second photo trip and I am truly excited about it. After all, in my books, spending time shooting with a best friend who is equally passionate about photography is as good as it gets. Couple of years ago we went to Lake District and really enjoyed ourselves. And we even managed to take some great pictures.

What we learned last time

Despite the weather, the photo shoot in Lake District was great and we both had fun. It was our first trip of such kind so it was as much about fun as it was about our learning. In hindsight, it is clear that next time we want to do some things differently.

Firstly, we wanted to visit too many places in the limited time we had. There’s simply so much to see and shoot over there. But the constant rush to visit as many interesting locations as possible forced us be on a constant move. And as good lighting conditions normally exist only in the morning and then late in the afternoon it meant that we had only an hour or so at each spot. We were both excited about what we saw and wanted to capture it as best as we could, but we did not take enough time to think and plan. We rushed ourselves from one place to another because we felt we were missing out on something. So we learned that this time we need to give ourselves a bit more time at each location to get the best light, to plan, to talk, to shoot and to enjoy. After all, as with any art, photography needs time.

Secondly, we realised that even though we do remember a lot from our first trip, lots of the details about where we went, what the conditions were, what challenges we faced or how we felt are now gone as we did not maintain any diary or log. So this time we plan to write daily Field Notes to capture all this. We will publish them daily here on Vertical Paper as well as on Martin’s and mine 500px stories pages. That way we will not only later remember all that’s worth remembering, but can also share it with others.

Where we go this time

These photo trips were meant to be an annual thing, but last year we somehow failed to find the right time. But this year (in fact tomorrow!) we are setting off again and this time we are heading south—to Dorset. The Jurassic coast is a beautiful piece of England and offers a number of great opportunities for landscape photography. After a bit of research we came up with this long-list of places of interest:

Lulworth and surrounding

  • Lulworth Cove
  • St Oswald’s Bay
  • Man o’War Cove
  • Stair Hole
  • Worbarrow Bay & Pondfield Cove

Kimmeridge and surrounding

  • Chapman’s Pool
  • Clavell Tower
  • Clavell’s Pier

Swanage and surrounding

  • Old & New Pier
  • Peveril Point
  • Quay
  • Anvil Point Lighthouse
  • Corfe Castle
  • Old Harry Rocks, Handfast Point

Others

  • Durdle Door
  • Portland Bill Lighthouse & Pulpit Rock
  • Colmer’s Hill

Clearly there’s no way we can visit all these places so we still need to do some serious “prioritisation” today. I think we should end up with maximum of four to six locations to give ourselves the opportunity to “explore” them properly.

We are leaving tomorrow early in the morning (in an attempt to avoid most of the traffic) and hope to reach Lulworth about three hours later. Our first Field Notes will be published tomorrow night so watch this space!

Milan & Martin

❧