The Return of the Grumpy Old Man - a photo on Flickriver

            Generally I'm a very happy chap when I'm out and about with the camera, glad to be at large in the natural world with nothing else much on my mind other than trying to coax something out of the view in front of me.  What's not to love about being in a beautiful place surrounded by fresh air and very often nothing but a few gulls for company after all?  The clifftops at Godrevy are the place where I sit and smile at sunset, watching the colours change and wondering what's for dinner, no matter how cold or wet the weather is.  Better than watching the telly I always think to myself.

And then just occasionally I feel that there's some sort of conspiracy among the elements to upset the equilibrium around me.  The sea spray seems to be that bit more persistent than usual; the waves just a little too unpredictable for me to venture closer to the shoreline than I otherwise might; the sudden gusts of air combining with the other malcontents to find me settling for a position that I'm really not overwhelmed with.  Take the volcanic sea stacks of Ribeira da Janela for example.  When I saw Nigel Danson here on YouTube it was one of the first places I scoured the online map for.  So keen was I not to miss out that I even booked the first week of the stay in neighbouring Porto Moniz so that I could visit more than once if need be.  Despite the almost total absence of ambient light, Mr Danson had pulled every ounce out of the cool blue seascape and produced an image that had almost yanked my eyes out of their sockets in anticipation.  In a location that reminded me so much of Cornwall, surely I'd be completely at home here in contrast to the challenges I'd no doubt face later in the mountains and the forests a mile above me in the sky?  

The reality was that I found it very difficult to settle into any sort of rhythm here.  Every single shutter release was punctuated by at least one resigned wipe of the filter with an increasingly filthy lens cloth.  Unable to trust the sea that was throwing the odd stray wave much further up through the cobbles than its counterparts I stayed further back than I really wanted to.  Further down there were enticingly glistening boulders fresh from their encounters with those occasional rogue soakers, while I timidly remained above the cobbled ridge that led steeply down to where the best action was happening.  Over to my left, the river that lends its name to the village up above me raced down into the ocean, but with no route across that I could see without trespassing through the grounds of the local hydro electric power station I couldn't easily get to a position that would have included it in my foreground.  It was turning into one of those sessions where I really wasn't being bold enough.  Sometimes that happens in a brand new location where you're not sure what may or may not be safe.  Perhaps I should have just got my boots wet and walked across, but the regular flow of selfie-seekers in and out of the frame was also distracting me and each time I moved to the left I lost the separation between the three elements in the sea that had drawn me here in the first place.  In fact the wave breaking over the large boulder would have provided that separation anyway if I'd thought about it.  And then there was the absence of scale.  Ok so shooting at 0.8 seconds wasn't going to allow me to include any gulls, but I could have chosen a faster speed and blended in post to show the sheer size of the stacks, the tallest of which climbs forty metres out of the ocean to dominate the composition.  In fact where were those gulls - had they not packed their cases and joined me here on a holiday from Godrevy?  And then there was Ali, having examined the view returning to sit patiently in the car with the book she was reading.  I'm so lucky she puts up with my spending long periods of time taking exactly the same picture over and over again, but my subconscious is always nagging me, reminding me that we can't stay here until it's almost dark.  On my own I'd have stopped until the last of the light left the beach.

Yesterday Lee and I met up with our friend Lloyd Austin at Godrevy and one conversation we had summed the situation up well.  "I love going back to a location over and over again," he said.  We were at the place that takes up more than ten percent of the pictures I've included in my Flickr feed so clearly I was in agreement with him.  Returning to a place on a regular basis allows you to "learn" it and gradually discover its best elements.  Ok Godrevy with its miles of dunes, sand and rocks and a river has infinitely more possibilities than Janela where the subject appears to be both singular and obvious, but my experience here exemplifies the point.  In the end I came away with a shot that I'm reasonably happy with - it wouldn't be here otherwise.  I like the soft clouds under the golden hour sky and the timing of that breaking wave, but a wider angle would have let the scene breathe at the edges, and better use of those boulders as a foreground point of interest might have elevated the shot to one I might have wandered off the beach at sunset grinning about.  Instead I shrugged, harrumphed at myself and vowed to return - something I did a couple of days later, but under a bright blue sky, the results of which are so far down the Madeira pecking order that they may never even reach the editing suite, let alone the public eye.   I do at least on the second visit seem to have put my underpants on outside my trousers ventured a little bit closer to the sea and dropped the tripod a bit lower to the foreground.  Shame I didn't look for a nice big rock to focus stack into the final image at the front of the scene though.  And in neither group of shots did it occur to me to shoot the sea stacks in portrait mode - it seems an obvious thing to have tried now.  Maybe the constant wiping of the filters was distracting me from the possibilities at hand.  As I've been reminded by one of you recently, each of us is our own worst critic.  It's a shame that Janela's not around the corner for me to try again with a bit more resolve, because the potential is there to make jaws drop to the floor with a bit more trial and error and the right conditions.  Strange though, that the most familiar looking surroundings found me feeling out of my depth more than anywhere else on the island.  Maybe that in itself is a learning point.  Still - there are plenty more images to come from The Floating Garden, mostly with much happier results from locations where I did come away from the scene with a huge grin on my face.  

As for Janela - well as long as nobody tries to build a hotel on stilts in between the stacks I can always go back one day and try again - after reading this story first to remind me what made myself so grumpy about the first couple of attempts there.

Taken in: Portugal / Madeira / Ribeira da Janela (show map)

Taken on: February 24, 2022

Tags:

Janela

Ribeira

da more »

rocks

boulder

Sea

seascape

sea shore

sea stack

seaspray

waves

Water

water_shots

water_captures

moving water

Madeira

Portugal

Cloud

Atlantic

Ocean

rock « less

Sets appears in: • Book - Landscape • Madeira 2022 more » • Sea Stacks and Islets • Portugal « less

Groups appears in: • Portugal • Madeira Island - Ilha da Madeira (Portugal) more » • PORTUGAL UNLIMITED / Portugal Sem Limites • Madeira Island Photos • "SEASCAPE" • Amateur Photographer Magazine • Immortal • Brain Vision. Art. • Rocks, cliffs, reefs and waves « less

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, f/13.0, 0.8 sec, 30mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Lens:	EF16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
Aperture:	f/13.0
Exposure Time:	0.8
Focal Length:	30mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	+1 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 11.2 (Windows)
Show full info

Stats: 10,775 views / 62 comments