Golden Mist - a photo on Flickriver

Golden Mist

            I only left the house because the van needed a run.  Our mechanic keeps telling us there’s nothing these old high milers love more than a long drive to keep them ready and raring to go.  But at half past two on a grey December afternoon, deep in the heart of Twixmas, a quick blast down the A30 would have to do.  Loggan’s Roundabout and back.  I had plenty of stuff to be getting on with at home, and I do like a good black and white film during the festive period.  More out of habit than anything else, I threw the camera and a couple of lenses in the bag and put them in the cab.  Just in case I decided to stay out for a bit.  

It was inevitable really.  Even though the ceiling outside the van was drearily grey and lifeless, I really needed to shake off the Christmas lethargy.  The fact that two consecutive Wednesdays had fallen on bank holidays meant there was no football to burn off the twin cheese and chocolate overdoses, so an energetic hike across the dunes seemed like an idea.  When I arrived at the car park, it quickly became clear that I wasn’t the only one who felt the need to kick away the cobwebs and get some fresh air.  There were far more cars than you usually see here on a Monday afternoon.  But even so, you can easily find space up on the dunes, and so I set off towards the west, grabbing the bag and the tripod.  Even if the contents stayed unused, the extra weight wouldn’t hurt.  By now I’d eaten an awful lot of cheese and we had started on the second giant Toblerone.  Friday football remained unaffected by the seasonal calendar this time around, but one game a week really wasn’t enough to tackle the torrent of cholesterol that was swirling around my insides by the day before New Year’s Eve.  

It’s no secret that the middle of winter is my favourite time here.  Isn’t it great that a hobby such as this makes the darkest months something to be enjoyed rather than feared?  The short daylight hours come with their challenges, but when I do go out with the camera I know I’m going to be home at a sensible hour, even if I’ve been down to the furthest reaches of Land’s End or Cape Cornwall and Botallack.  The Towans of Gwithian are comfortably under half an hour away and the big council car park (at least for now) remains free to users from November to March.  It’s the perfect place to watch the evening set in over the Penwith hills to the west.  Even when the light isn’t doing much.  And the sky had been pretty well featureless as I marched across the rolling greens and yellows, following the smaller footpaths where I could be more or less alone with my thoughts as I went.  But now, as so often happens, an envelope of light opened up through the greys and started to gently glow, just in the right place.  I took a few shots from one of the higher dunes and continued my walk.  Maybe I’d end up down on the beach, I wasn’t sure.  Further along my route, I came to the point where the sands suddenly open up in front of the viewer, and found a place near the cliff edge in which I’ve planted the tripod more than once in the past.  I was surprised by just how many people were down there on the beach, one or two of them braving the ocean, while a kite surfer charged across the waves.  For now I wouldn’t head down to the sand.  I was enjoying watching the world from here.  I set up the tripod.

Just in time as it turned out.  Within moments, the sun dropped into the glowing envelope to set the sea on fire, clouds of spray growing into a hazy golden mist that hovered over the water and lit up the centre of my frame while everything around it disappeared into secretive shadows.  Dozens of silhouettes continued to stroll purposefully along the sand, many of them picked out by the soft rays that reached down and touched them through the gap in the doom laden clouds.  A host of Christmas hangovers, walking off the cheese and Toblerones.  The magic lasted for no more than two or three minutes, and then the window in the sky closed for the evening.  To think that all I was going to do was to whizz down to the big roundabout and back.  Blink and you so easily miss these moments.

I did make it down to the beach afterwards, but only so I could be next to the sea for a while before clambering back up onto the dunes.  Chased by a dusk lit shower I made a point of climbing all of the tallest dunes on the way back to the van, even running over a couple of them, just for the sake of compensating for the football games I was missing this Christmas.  Hopefully by the time we get back to business as usual, I won’t pass out in a pile of cheese within five minutes of kick off.

Taken in: UK / England / Gwinear-Gwithian / Gwithian (show map)

Taken on: December 30, 2024

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Sunset

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golden hour

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Sea

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Beach

vista

telephoto

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kite surfer

Cloud

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Sets appears in: • Godrevy

Groups appears in: • Sunset Great Britain • Beautiful British Coast more » • "SEASCAPE" • Cornish Coast • Photography Week • Flickr Social • Feast for the Eyes • « less

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, f/11.0, 1/6 sec, 104mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Lens:	EF70-200mm f/4L USM
Aperture:	f/11.0
Exposure Time:	0.167 sec (1/6)
Focal Length:	104mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 14.1.1 (Macintosh)
Show full info

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