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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Some new Gower pics - 1

On Monday, I finally got to head for the south-western corner of the Gower Peninsula. It's been about five months since I last visited Port Eynon or Rhossili. Monday dawned bright and beautiful, if a little hazy, so I made sure I took a couple of Stugeron for my travel sickness, and headed out a couple of hours later.

First port of call was Port Eynon (no pun intended). There were quite a few people around, and to my surprise, the Seafarer takeaway and restaurant was open, so I grabbed some takeaway lunch. Even until a year or two ago, it was rare to find any of the Gower takeaways open at this time of year, as they usually only open during the tourist season. They've obviously caught on to the fact that people visit the beaches all year round, provided it's not raining.

Although it was a gorgeous day, conditions were far from ideal for photography. The sunlight was very harsh, with no cloud cover whatsoever. So every shot I took proved a challenge, thanks to the stark contrasts between bright, glaring sunlight and deep shadows. There was also a fair bit of haze around, which made things even tougher. No doubt, a professional photographer would know what to do in such conditions. Alas, I'm no professional, so virtually none of my images turned out as well as I hoped they would.



I tried getting a few shots of the reflections on the beach. Only a couple turned out vaguely viewable. The rest were a mess of lens flares and images that were totally whitened out by surface glare. Not a pretty sight.



Heading east along the beach gave me some better results, as the sun was then behind me, to the south-west. The tide was the furthest out I've ever seen it at Port Eynon. I really wanted to walk as far along the beach as possible, to explore new territory. But I had to keep an eye on the clock, as I was relying on public transport.



Any idea what left this print? It was about the size of an eight year old's hand. Some kind of large bird, I guess.



The prints in this next shot were definitely made by a large bird. Me!


After a couple of hours at Port Eynon, I headed to the scenic Rhossili, for a very scary visit, which I'll tell you about in my next post.

Click here to see the rest of my Port Eynon images from Monday.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to see you are out and about again.
The weather is great here too.
A.

Dragonstar said...

In spite of your disappointment with your photos, it looks like a gorgeous day to be out and about. Days like that make you feel you've survived another winter.

Siani said...

Thanks for the comments, folks. Yes, it was a gorgeous day - unusually mild for the time of year. In fact, I think I heard somewhere that it was the warmest February day in recorded history. Alas, the sun's hiding behind a big blanket of cloud today - and it's freezing!

 
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