For more than half an hour I’d moved over the beach carefully, treading only on the boulders to preserve the pristine sand. There were just three of us there, Lee somewhere up on the rocks to the left, a lady perched behind her tripod on the third stop of her day trip here from distant Somerset, and me, hopping about the dinosaur eggs with intent, wondering where that shot might be. I’d been here plenty of times before of course – who wouldn’t keep coming back to a spot like this after all? – but it was rare that my visit had timed so neatly with an outgoing tide. I’ve wanted to shoot the beach at low tide for all too long; nowadays it’s so easy to open up the Magic Seaweed app on your phone to answer such concerns, so I’m not really sure what was keeping me from making the short journey at the right moment up until now. The Clear Outside app had also convinced me that the area around Land’s End promised to be our best bet for some golden hour light on what was proving to be yet another dreary and oppressive grey day thirty miles up the road at home, and I used this late bulletin to convince my partner in crime that Porth Nanven was the place we should head for. Happily, he seemed to be in agreement.
Before pulling the camera from the bag and setting it on the tripod, I did what I like to do best; sitting on a boulder sipping coffee from my flask and trying to make sense of it all. Not the crisis at the Ukrainian border or the alarming inflation rate – the big questions are for greater minds than mine – but the ever-changing landscape in front of me. As the tide receded, new boulders continued to emerge from the sea near the water’s edge. The lady from Somerset had taken advantage of our initial foray onto the rocky outcrop above the beach and made straight for the prime position that I’d had my eye on, where the stream runs down from the Cot Valley and over the boulders and sand to the left of the big slab of rock that some of you know well, and into the ocean. After further coffee and consideration, I finally made my move, noticing that the stream was also running to the right side of the rock. I checked to make sure I wasn’t blundering into her composition and shuffled down to my vantage point, congratulating myself on wearing wellies and walking along the stream to preserve the untouched sand. There are so many reasons to keep a pair of wellies in the back of the car for moments like these, and no advantages whatsoever in leaving them at home in the porch.
Everything was perfect. The sun was smiling weakly through translucent clouds, bringing a soft veil of yellow diffusion to the south western sky. The benign sea delivered just enough energy to add a sense of adventure to the scene, and then there was that gorgeous rarity in the pure white sand that still showed not the slightest sign it had been walked upon in the last million years. Isn’t it wonderful how those twice daily tides are like hitting a giant reset button in the sky? Of course, I was about to spoil that by planting my tripod on the beach, but I wasn’t getting in anyone’s way after all – I’d already checked that carefully. Besides which, it would only be a few hours until the night sea would steal across the sand to wash away my indiscretions and briefly restore the purity.
As I reached for my camera and attached it to the tripod, I heard a new sound behind me. Sounds in fact. Inwardly I groaned as I turned around and confirmed what I already knew was about to come as two excited dogs charged across the beach and into the composition in front of me. Suddenly there were paw prints where a few moments earlier there was only perfection. Suddenly the shot I was about to take was going to need an awful lot of content aware fill in Photoshop later on. Ironically, a day or so earlier I’d chuckled as I’d watched Tom Heaton on YouTube cursing dog walkers and joggers, branding them the enemies of photographers, even though he himself owns a dog. A couple of days ago I hovered between hilarity and horror at Stuart McGlennon’s difficult encounter with a belligerent dog walker who seemed hell-bent on provoking our hero and his two friends into a bout of fisticuffs at Scarista Beach on the Isle of Harris.
I should stress at this point that I love all things furry – well most of them anyway - I'd rather the eight legged ones kept themselves to themselves if you don't mind. I’ve never owned one myself but Ali and I regularly collect a pair of dogs belonging to rather more time pressured members of her family and take them for walks along the beach. It’s the ideal place to let them run around and wear themselves out, especially in winter when they’re not going to career over the ground at breakneck speed, spraying sand into your Auntie Maud’s cucumber sandwiches and Uncle Derek’s opened can of Watney’s Pale Ale as they make for the shoreline. We photographers have no business dictating to others of course. We don’t own the outside world after all - even though we sometimes think we ought to when we’re attempting to create meaningful magnificence behind the viewfinder. In fact, you may own one yourself – I know that some of you who will read this are dog walkers as well as photographers. Lee himself regularly arrives at our door early on a Monday morning demanding to be entertained while his twin Schnauzers are pampered beyond recognition at “Pimp up your Pooch,” a dog grooming establishment just along the road from us. There’s little you can do of course, you just have to swear silently to yourself, suck it up and recompose the image – which was what I did now. No need for the spot removal tool in this composition. I did like the soft grey tones and three little crests chasing each other into the sea and the incoming splash waiting to meet them.
The rest of the afternoon found me moving further and further to the right hand side of the beach, where there are only huge cobbles and no sand to speak of. The dogs had gone, and although the odd person came and went, the three of us who were here already continued in our own little worlds of contentment, steadily adding new compositions to the day’s collections as the tide continued to ebb away from the cobbles. The light changed and the sky coloured, gradually fading and deepening as the blue hour came and went. Three more photographers arrived, one of them setting up close to me near the left hand side of the beach where I’d decided to end the day standing in the stream. Another dog appeared, a black labrador laying what remained of the unsullied sand to a messy wasteland. I already had a bonanza of raw files to pore over later. It was time to go.
We decided to eat out, awarding ourselves a roast at the immortal Smokey Joe’s. It seemed an excellent way to end a productive afternoon. As we left the famous truck stop, one of the occupants of the forest of articulated lorries that were filling the car park engaged us in conversation, starting amiably enough with a satisfied review of the menu, with which we agreed. Deciding he’d found kindred spirits, he offered “I’ll bet you two are the same as me – started working in your teens, not like all the lazy b******ds who can’t be arsed to do anything for themselves?” It seemed we had one of those crusading pub philosophers on our hands – the ones you always try to avoid eye contact with as you see them nodding at you across the bar when you order a couple of pints of Sea Fury before repairing to a quiet corner to hide. Not for the first time today I groaned inwardly and swore silently to myself as our new friend began a tirade about anyone who couldn’t trace their roots at least as far back as Ethelred the Unready and which Siberian outpost he thought they should be sent to. It wasn’t the time to tell him I was one of those idle b******ds who didn’t have a proper job until I was 22 and retired as soon as I could possibly afford to because I thought there were more interesting things to be doing with my life. I’m always nervous of people who are so certain of their views on world issues. The only things I’m sure of are that a beach looks better on an outgoing tide when there are no paw prints on it, and that you can achieve so much more in wellies. Why on earth he thought we shared his world view I really can’t say – I only have a shaved head because even a bucket load of Regaine wouldn’t revive the few remaining wisps on top of it. Maybe he can solve the Ukraine crisis and the surging rate of inflation. Perhaps we should have asked him to use his talents to end the ongoing issues between photographers and dog walkers at the seaside. People like that are usually full of answers after all. We nodded and made appropriate noises as we backed away through the darkness towards the sanctity of the car, leaving him to seek out another hapless victim to engage in his one way conversation.
It had been an excellent day, albeit one with the odd strange encounter to contend with. The quiet hours on the empty beach had been worth those passing moments of discomfort after all. There's something rather magnificent in just sitting among those cobbles, watching the way the incoming waves washing around them and creating patterns that linger in your soul after the dogs and the angry men have gone.
