A Decade in the Making
Having now spent the best part of the last decade living on the South Coast after moving from the midlands, one of my favourite locations for landscape photography has always been Corfe Castle. Despite it being one of the most popular and most photographed, I always feel there is so much potential in terms of angles to shoot from, weather conditions and variation in height to either photograph from above or below. I have spent dozens of mornings on the adjacent hill in freezing temperatures capturing sunrise and ultimately the mist and cloud shrouding the base of the castle. Whether it being too foggy to even see across the valley, or arriving to little to no mist as forecast, I have never being able to achieve the exact shot I’m looking for. After travelling across so many times over the last 10 years with little to no success, the predicted forecast seemed pretty perfect when I woke earlier recently to make the trip. The journey normally consists of a level of anxiousness which is brought on by so many failed attempts. It wasn’t until I had parked close to the castle and began the short trip up the hill that I began thinking after so long, this could be the morning.
Once at the top of the hill, it became clear pretty quickly that the conditions were different to any other morning I had spent there. The low hanging cloud was covering the castle, all but the very tip of its highest point. I set up the gear and awaited the sun with about 20 mins to spare. With very little wind, as the cloud slowly moved through the valley, the castle slowly revealed itself with a perfect cloud inversion below. After so many failed attempts over the last decade, I couldn’t actually quite believe what was happening. The conditions could not have been more perfect, even to the point that the temperatures weren’t even that cold for the time of year. Despite a stunning sunrise that followed, my favourite image from the morning is the one seen above, a pre dawn glow providing some of the best tones I’ve photographed.
I spent some time switching between a 70-200mm and a 16-35mm to try different compositions before sunrise. As the sun began to rise above the cloud below, the frustration at some many mornings without the images I had hoped for slowly became a distant memory. I couldn’t of asked for a better sunrise across the valley lighting the tops of the clouds below accompanied by a few orange tinted clouds against the blue sky above. The contrast between the clouds and the shadows of the castle itself provided to perfect amount of separation between foreground and background.
After what felt like hours of shooting, but in reality was about 40 mins, I began to pack down the gear and head down the hill. Before leaving I couldn’t finish the mornings shooting without photographing the gate on the hill that has been the savour of so many other failed morning’s shoots. The way it frames to castle beyond provides a really visually pleasing composition that when accompanied by the cloud inversion below created a really eye catching shot that tops all of my other previous shots from the same spot. After returning home and spending sometime editing I’ve had plenty of time to reflect and take in the experience. When you have spent so much time over several years chasing a specific shot and it finally plays out in front of you, the experience is one that almost doesn’t feel real. Whilst frustrating at the time and on occasion losing hope of the possibility of ever getting that shot, I wouldn’t change the last decade at all. The many failed attempts make the final outcome one of the most rewarding sets of images I’ve ever captured as a photographer.
