The Moment of the Opportunist - a photo on Flickriver

            A couple of weeks ago, there was a flurry of excitement on the family Whatsapp channel.  My sister had been out on the Sunday afternoon, walking the clifftops between Porthtowan and Portreath, when she'd spotted a pod of dolphins.  The news was received with the usual mixture of enthusiasm and derision.  My brother always refuses to believe any such news unless he's seen the evidence for himself.  "No you can't have done!" he'll retort.  "They don't exist because I haven't seen them."  It's always intended to be tongue in cheek and humorous when he makes these comments.  At least I think it is.  He also refuses to believe in Peregrine Falcons, chiefly because I've seen them now and again in these parts.  One day I'm going to tell him that I've seen an albatross and really send his heckles into overdrive.

Ali and I were also mildly irritated by the sighting.  After all, we're the ones that live near this coast and we're always wandering around on the clifftops, keeping our eyes peeled for those tell-tale dorsal fins.  Ali had never seen dolphins at all, despite being born and bred just down the road from here.  I promised her we'd see them together one day.  

"One day" happened to be the following afternoon in fact.  We'd borrowed Ali's sister's dog and headed for the cliffs between Porthtowan and Chapel Porth.  Just to clear the cobwebs and take some fresh oxygen into the lungs on a calm sunny January afternoon.  As we always do, we struggled up the steep slope from the car park and made our way over the back of the cliffs,  keeping well away from the edges (you have to do this with a spaniel that goes from zero to one hundred miles per hour in a single nanosecond).  And then as we crested a slope and the sea came into view, we could see that something was going on.  Dolphins in fact - lots of them.  And guess what?  I'd thought about bringing the camera with me, and had decided not to bother.  For a while we put the dog on the lead and sat at the cliff edge, watching them swim back and forth, sometimes leaping clear out of the waves, drawn here by shoals of mackerel on the move.  I zoomed my phone to ten times magnification and sent the video to the family.  My brother's silence was deafening.  "Why hadn't I brought the camera with me?" I cursed at myself.  To add insult to injury, as we headed down onto the beach an hour later, a blood red sunset ignited the clouds and filled the sky with fire.  My phone did the best it could, but honestly you'd have thought I'd have learned by now that the camera should always be on hand for moments such as this.  See that mackerel sky in my last post?  This was even better.  Deep blood red sky.  How often does that happen when your camera is nestling safely in a box at home?  Abject failure right there. 

And so of course I spent the rest of the week on the cliff, armed with both cameras, the crop body mounted with the big telephoto lens, ready for the slightest hint of action in the sea.  Did I see a dolphin again that week?  Not a single one.  The pair of grizzled  surfers I chatted to the next afternoon told me they'd seen them earlier, bluefin tuna leaping from the sea too for that matter, but as we scanned the ocean in front of us, nothing more than a couple of grey seals moved through the water.  And rather a lot of surfers. 

And so I can't show you a picture of a pod of dolphins - although I will keep trying.  But I did capture a moment when a brief gap in the clouds lit the neighbouring headland at Wheal Coates.  For a moment a bright patch appeared to illuminate the engine house of Towanroath, while the shadows around it created a natural vignette.  Rapidly I opened the pack and grabbed the camera mounted with the long lens, and with no time to faff about setting up the tripod, I trusted myself with a handheld snap at 400mm.  One of those rare images where very little editing was required.  With the lens wide open I had the blurred foreground that I wanted, while nature did the rest.  I laughed to myself at the irony.  I've never been happy with my shots of Towanroath from this side.  Often harshly lit I've found, and usually too many people in shot to make the edit worthwhile.  I've never been quite comfortable with either of the foreground paths from closer range.  But now, from maybe half a mile away, it seemed to work.  

At least I've made peace with a view that I've struggled with many times before.  The long lens had won something from the day again, despite the absence of what I'd come here to see.  As for those dolphins - I guess they'll show up again eventually.

Taken in: UK / England / St. Agnes / Towan Cross (show map)

Taken on: January 26, 2023

Tags:

Wheal Coates

Towanroath

Cornwall

cornish coast

England

Great Britain

Britain

telephoto

100-400

St Agnes « less

Sets appears in: • Book - Landscape • Wheal Coates and Chapel Porth

Groups appears in: • Amateurs • Cornwall more » • Cornwall Flickr Users • Photography Week • On Landscape • Flickr Social • Cornwall & West Devon Mining Archaeology « less

Camera: Canon EOS 80D, f/5.6, 1/320 sec, 400mm, ISO 160 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 80D
Lens:	EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM
Aperture:	f/5.6
Exposure Time:	0.003 sec (1/320)
Focal Length:	400mm
ISO:	160
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Partial
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 12.1 (Windows)
Show full info

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