3RD VIEW OF CORFE CASTLE

7:20am

Corfe Castle - Dorset - 7:05am

Portland - Dorset

Portland - Dorset

I am collecting a wide range of subjects for my calendar this year. I will be taking orders in late November but if you would like to purchase one Please contact me on info@johnalexander.me.uk and I will place you down for an order.

I decided to get some shots of Portland on Dorset's Jurassic coast. I arrived late, I had approximately 10 minutes until the sun dipped below the horizon. After paying the car park my entire life's savings, I ran to position myself in hoping to capture the last golden rays of the setting sun side-lighting the Portland Limetone of Pulpit Rock. As I caught sight of the English Channel, the wind immediately nearly knocked me off my feet, the sea spray aslo made it difficult as one speck of spray on the lens compromises the entire photograph (not forgetting the life of my camera)!

The hardest shots to get are always the best, I said this to myself, as I clambered down the cliff, tripod and camera over my shoulder. I needed to get as close to the action as possible to deliver the most impact in the image. I huddled behind a boulder attempting to shade myself from the howling wind and spray to get a clean, blur free image. Tripod, remote release, and camera in position. I took off the lens cap at the last moment. I managed to take this photograph and as soon as the 1/2 second exposure ended, a tsunami of all waves smashed the rocks in front of me and drenched my camera, filters, lenses, tripod and of least importantly, myself.

This part of taking photographs I really love. The excitement of climbing on slippery rocks, the gamble of having thousands of pounds worth of equipment on my shoulder and having the possibility of destroying it by just one wave makes it all the more exciting. There is a time for waiting for the light to come over the horizon on a misty morning, the spectacle provides you with that excitement, but then there is that other dimension of adrenaline that also makes my landscape photography really exciting to shoot.

I quickly took off my jacket, and rubbed my camera, filters and lenses with my jumper attempting to get as much of the salt and water off the camera. For the next few minutes the camera didn't turn on but eventually after drying it with every layer of clothing I had on my body it came back to life.

The night shot of Portland Bill lighthouse doesn't have such a dramatic story, but hopefully the images does! The shot is a 10 minutes exposure with still a little light in the sky. The foreground was pitch black, so I used my flash gun to illuminate the foreground during the exposure.

CORFE CASTLE - DORSET

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JOHN ALEXANDER LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY - Sully Sur Loire en France

In the last few months, or even the last year I have neglected my landscape photography. Most of my work now involves weddings and rural sports photography, portraiture with a few parties in the mix. I find this sad, and thought I would blog of why landscape photography is one of my favourite aspects of my business.

Yes, one contemplates suicide as the alarm sounds, which you have set on the highest volume so you definitely wake-up, even though you have woken up intermittently every hour worrying that you won't. With blurred eyes you see the clock reads 03:45. You are reminded that a 45 minute drive, half an hour walk in the dark, and an hour wait for that perfect light, which most likely will never appear, is on the cards and it's probably a lot easier to stay where you are. These negative thoughts always run through my mind as I read the minuscule numbers presented on my alarm clock.

I constantly have to force myself to think positive and in the words of Nike "just do it". To personalise it, I recommend adding a selection of strong adjectives within the phrase somewhere. Then, when your alarm sounds at 4am, shout it, while leaping up out of bed in an offensive manner. It really works (if your single that is), it also works if you want to become single!

Once some sort of un-nutritous item of consumption has been semi-digested, I get in the car drive towards my destination. In this case 'Sully sur Loire' en France.

I reached the exact position of where I thought the photograph should be taken from, which I had decided the previous afternoon. I varied it slightly as there was a little wind, blurring the reflection of the castle. I moved until the castle was reflected in the sheltered part of the river where the reflection was near perfect. A couple of otters swam past me as I was setting up my tripod, unfortunately it was still too dark to take any convincing photographs of them, I tried of course with my wide angle lens on manual focus but a blue blur with 2 blobs couldn't even pass as an abstract.

I waited for the first of the sun's rays to cast a subtle orange hue onto the east side of Sully Chateau, using the linear perspective of the trees running along the river to lead the viewer into the photograph. As the sun's rays began to get stronger and more contrasty, the clouds had moved and it had lost the atmosphere of earlier in the morning, after taking a few more compositions I packed up pour manger une baguette.