St. Marys Lighthouse – Knightshoots Landscape Photography

St Marys Lighthouse, Blythe, Linhope Linn and Bird Photography

Northumberland 2021: Part Nine

12 June 2021

I got up for sunrise in plenty of time today. No more oversleeping for me! The tide was on its way in, so I needed to be careful that I didn’t get trapped on the little isolated section of sand, which was my chosen position for this morning. As it goes it was absolutely fine. The red in the sky was lovely, but unfortunately it stuck to a line of cloud on the horizon and there was little above it to even the colour out (see header photo) Although I took what I could, I actually thought I preferred yesterdays dawn shot (am I just being a fussy moo?!) As I left, the tide continued in, and I snapped a photo with my phone from higher up on the cliff. I really liked this position. It had a much better, open feel to it, for my taste. So I made a mental note of that spot for another time. For this morning however, the sun had risen fully by this point, the cloud was building and I wanted to start clearing up some coastal locations before moving inland. This meant a return visit to Blythe, so I drove straight there and jumped right into the spot I had been trying. Thankfully, the sun climbed out of a cloud for a short while, and beamed onto the huts exactly how I hoped it would. I only needed to take a few shots and I was done here too!

Third time lucky with the Blythe beach huts!

From here I drove for a while to go and find the waterfall at Linhope Linn. The drive was a pretty comfortable one, and towards the end I found myself driving parallel to a river – a long road, with large swathes of grassy areas. All along here were parked cars with people eating picnics, sunbathing, paddling in the water, and having a good day out in the sun, that was confidently beaming down now. There were ‘no camping’ signs everywhere, so I assumed all these were day trippers, which made the scene really lovely. I am used to seeing crowds at a beach, but I’ve never seen this sight along a river in this manner this before. I followed this road further until I was just over a mile away from the waterfall when I saw a few cars parked to the side of the road. I went to drive past them when I realised that from here the road was private, so this was actually as far as I could go. I carefully turned the van round and parked along with all the others and prepped myself a quick lunch to take with me. It was mid day, and I was already really hungry…(although to be fair, as I was up at 3.45, I guess my body felt it was much later!)

Now, I wasn’t expecting anything too exciting, since this was essentially just a straight down waterfall without anything specifically ‘pretty’ about it (other than being a natural waterfall of course!) but the hike was really lovely and I did it quicker than expected. (As I started walking, I’d asked a family on their return trip how long the hike was. One of the teens quoted ‘about an hour and a half’ – and 45 minutes later I was there!) I hoped that this meant my fitness level had been improving, since I am usually the slow one in a party, and this was a real improvement on the family’s quote! On your arrival to this one, you come to the top of the falls and look down. I saw quite a few people at the base when I looked – most with picnics, a group of free jumpers, swimmers and some packing up to leave. I wasn’t too concerned. I was happy to wait for them since I was in no real hurry, and besides that, my grumbling stomach demanded attention first! I ate the food, and as I finished, a delightful male chaffinch flew over to me and seemed happy to show off the big fly in his mouth. I chatted to him and he watched me intently. Eventually, I carefully got my camera out, and nervously tried to grab a few photos. This was a little more unsettling for him, and he hopped to several spots before disappearing altogether, making photographing him tricker than I expected. It was a beautiful moment though, he was clearly very trusting of people! After he’d flown away, I climbed to the bottom of the falls and looked at a few positions for shots. Unfortunately, from here, the sun was literally on top of the waterfall, and the light flared down the lens making every shot totally impossible. I struggled for a bit, then gave up, realising I would have to try this spot later on after the sun had moved more to the right. I climbed to the side instead and took a photo across the whole scene. The dynamic range here was very harsh too (lots of extremely light and dark areas in one shot) but I hoped I could balance it all up in the edit at home. It took a bit of work, but I did manage it. The shot was far too busy and cluttered for me to be totally satisfied with it though, and I suspect I should have just focused on smaller intimate scenes here. This fall was proving to be really tricky!

As I waited for the sun to move over far enough, I decided to try a little bird photography. Seeing the Chaffinch that close up had me really excited to try some more! I very briefly spotted, but didn’t manage to capture, a grey wagtail, which I love, and then I got buzzed by a Robin. To my delight, he was quite happy to pose a little for me – from a distance of course.

By now the sun had moved on, and the crowd of people had begun to thin, so I made my way back to the bottom of the waterfall again. The light was a little better, but what I had failed to really notice earlier, was how this fall comes down straight into a steeply sided rocky pool, that is obscured most of the way around. The only angle I could get where the composition was remotely pleasing to my eyes, proved to be one where I was perched at an odd angle, squeezed between a rock and a big tree, one foot in the water on a wobbly stone, one tripod leg likewise, and balancing quite precariously. I tried several shots, but the tree right next to me was very distracting and it really constricted my view. After some cropping, this ended up being the only shot I actually came near to liking, and even then, I wish I had of been a little quicker on the shutter so that the water was less of a blur. As it was though, I was too uncomfortable and concerned about the safety issues with this position to stay working this image for too long. I ended up abandoning it and clambering to safety after just a few shots. But, I know where this is, and if I am ever here again, I know what to expect. Next time I won’t go in such bright sunshine though, since it really hampered my efforts, and maybe I’d also go well out of the summer season, so I don’t have to work around so many people having a swim. I suspect this left me feeling too self conscious to explore compositional ideas thoroughly enough. For such an isolated area, I was quite surprised to see the numbers of people that were here, I wont lie!

Closer up on the falls once the sun had moved round

As I walked back to the camper, I wondered what to do for this evening. With so many ‘no overnight camping’ signs, I felt a bit loathed to stay (which had been my original idea given how little sleep I’d had over the last 2 days). While I pondered my options, I had tea and just sat looking out at the countryside around where I had parked. In the field next to me, goldfinches seemed to be playing together. They hid in the tall grasses, all erupted into view at once and seemed to chase each other, before they hid again, and then repeated the scene. This was such a delight to watch! Their happy chattering made it totally impossible to not smile at their antics. Unfortunately they were quite a distance away from me, but when one came slightly closer and just sat on a fence post, I was able to get a (slightly soft focus sadly) shot of him, before he vanished off to the games again. Way down the road, a pied wagtail wandered about, twitching his long tail as they do, and over the other side, pheasants wandered a safe distance away, keeping their eyes on this strange creature with a long metal eye that looked a little suspicious. They were all to far away to photograph well, sadly, but just sitting, eating, watching them all, and making a few vain efforts to photograph them, made me insanely happy and at peace.

Birds from today! A Robin, a Chaffinch and a Goldfinch

After some debate, I settled on going to Simonside, a location that had been recommended to, rather than researched by, me. I wasn’t totally sure what to find there, but it was something different, and, I was told, they had no issues with campers stopping overnight. This seemed to be an ideal location to stop and rest after the lack of sleep for 2 days. 7 hours total managed in 48 hours. Not good! I arrived at nearly 10pm, and once there, settled straight into bed. I was out like a light in minutes.

My Adventures

St Marys Lighthouse, Chambois, and Blythe

Northumberland 2021: Part Eight

11 June 2021

This morning I wanted to finish Tyne and Wear with location no. 4 and my most anticipated place to date. St Mary’s Lighthouse. Just about every photo I had seen from this location looked amazing, and it seemed there were endless possibilities for compositional ideas! The day started off really early, but where I had been driving so late into the night, I overslept slightly. I hurridly got ready and rushed out – but, a little guttingly, found the walk to be further than I realised and although I tried to hike at some pace over to the lighthouse, the sky bloomed into beautiful shades of pink and red, then faded in minutes. The colour had all but gone by the time I arrived. I was SO disappointed at myself! Despite what I felt however, the site WAS still lovely and I felt very relieved that I managed to get there in time for the actual rising of the sun – which allowed for some shots with a warm orange glow on the water instead. This shot was literally the first spot I plonked my camera on, and I was not at all unhappy with this as a start! The tide was just beginning to receed, and as it did the causeway over to the lighthouse island was being revealed. I wasn’t sure how far out the water went, but I guessed it meant that there would be a lot of varying opportunities, at a huge variety of different times. If I couldn’t get what I hoped for on this trip, its one of those locations I feel you can keep coming back to, since water height, and different sunset/sunrise/weather conditions etc would change just about every shot for sure!

St Marys Lighthouse, first dawn attempt.

As I finished these shots, I met another early riser out with his camera, and we chatted for a while. This man was a real inspiration to me, as he told me his story of why he got into photography. He’d had a stroke several years ago, and it incapacitated him to such a degree, that it changed his life. One of his medics advised him to find a hobby that would keep both his mind and body active, but in a gentler way than he was used to. Alan decided to take up photography – and in just a few years, not only has the quality of his work boomed, but he had the added bonus that the lingering effects of the stroke all but disappeared. Looking at him, I would never have known anything like that had ever happened. His story is a wonderful example of how this hobby helps build lives back again. Where my adventure helps me with my depression and self identity issues, his helped him recover from a serious medical issue. Look up some of his work and see just how hard he worked at his photography as a recovery aid.. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005502481710 and tell me that this hobby isnt one of the best self healing tools you can give yourself?!

Once Alan had left, I looked around for a while. Since there was SO much opportunity here, I decided that I might try a sunset shot here as well. This meant, ideally, that I needed to stay fairly local to this area. By now, large swathes of rock were visible, but the area was covered with growing numbers of tourists, so staying didn’t seem appealing. I thought that maybe Blythe might be worth re trying. I made my way back to the camper, and headed off, reconsidering my route as I drove, and headed slightly higher up the coast to Chambois beach. It had a parking spot right near it, and was pretty close to Blythe, so I simply thought, ‘why not have a look?’ and I wandered on down. It was pretty much like most beaches, and fairly plain. The most noticeable thing here however, was a huge pipe that seemed to go on forever out into the water. For such an ‘ugly’ feature, it was a fascinating thing to look at. Having said that, it wasn’t the easiest thing to photograph and I really struggled to capture it from either side in a way that I liked. Ideally, I thought, I needed to get above it – and before I knew what I was really doing, I found myself climbing up the sides, and I was perched on the top. Now this view was more like it!! The first shots were nice, but I noted that the tide had turned and I realised that they would be even better if the water were in more. So I simply sat and waited. Its an odd shot, but I still really like it! All the mosses, algaes, and crustations stuck to it, give it so much character, and the lovely lines of the coal grains in the sand almost give a sense of water movement. I say almost, since the water was coming so gently, there was little to no surf movement at all, meaning there was actually no white froth in any of my photos. This has really helped reduce the seperation between the beach and the sea, and the scene looks very gentle and calm because of that effect. Getting down afterwards was a slightly different story however… It looked SO much higher when I looked down and the tide was now in! Eek! I gritted my teeth through my fear of heights, treading carefully with the offbalance provoking kit on my back, and just accepted the very wet legs…(!!)

From there I travelled down to Blythe and tried to check out the pier. I hadn’t noticed, but the wind had really started to pick up over this last hour and the further I walked along the pier, the more noticeable it became. It was strange… I have no real head for heights – climbing up the pipe earlier posed very few problems for me – yet walking along this wooden pier (for a fair distance), had me extremely uncomfortable. Maybe it was because it had gotten so windy and I could see choppy water below my feet at points? Who knows?! For most of the walk up to the end, I was literally hanging on to the rusty handrail though! I tried to get a photo, but it was terribly hard, and really didn’t happen. Although one of the set was almost acceptable (see header), it wasnt the image I wanted from here. Giving up, I tentitively wabbled my way back, deciding to try this shot from the beach on a calmer day!

I then tried to photograph the beach huts, but realised the sun was now behind them, meaning that the colourful fronts of the huts were now in shadow. This also pointed to the fact that I needed to come back here another time – so I stopped trying to push Blythe today, and simply packed everything away in the camper before wandering over to the fish and chips shop right by the car park. This proved to be an awesome supper, and I felt ready to tackle the sunset at St Marys now without needing to think of cooking a meal tonight. I popped by Seaton Sluice on the way back, just a short visit to have a look, and there I noted all the coloured pebbles, gathering a few with an idea for a photo if I could find more (and a sandy beach) then I drove onto St Marys again, finding a good car park much closer to the Lighthouse this time..

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but the tide here was so far back out again, that there was nothing but bare rocks on show everywhere. This would mean that I wouldn’t be able to get the watery shot as I hoped, but it was a challenge that I was willing to work with. Since sunset was still a couple of hours away, I decided to go and be a tourist for a bit, and check out the island. Everything was closed by now, but it was still possible to have a quick walk around, see the seals basking on the rocks, watch some of the birds, observe the quiet scurryings of some small mammals (well OK, yes – rats!) and then to amble back to get my camera. The seals especially, were a real treat to see. It was lovely to see signs up everywhere telling people to stay off the rocks at low tide to help encourage the wildlife here to feel secure enough that they would keep returning.

Once I had my camera with me again, I took a walk around the rocky part on the mainland, and found a couple of spots I quite liked. It was harder than I thought though, as the rocky pools were very small, and covered in ripples in the breeze. This meant that sweet, intimate reflection shots proved impossible. From my perspective, the whole of the wider view was filled with a confusing foreground that completely detracted from the lighthouse. This was a challenge indeed! For now however, the sun was beginning to set, and the sky lit up beautifully. I found myself a position further back still, and lowered the camera right down to try and cut out all the middle ground. I think this worked a bit better.

Sunset at St Marys Lighthouse, with the sky putting on an awesome performance.

The red light turned the rocks all a lovely pink, and although not totally thrilled with the shot, I loved sitting out in this light. The colour stayed for ages in the sky once the initial sunset had faded and I felt that it truly was a beautiful place. I really need to dedicate several days to this spot to explore it better though I think – at different times – to guage the tides and the varying looks it offered. What a location!!

As I wandered back to the van at the end, there were still people around, one of which, somewhat annoyingly, was flying a drone near to the lighthouse and all the rocks there. This made me feel a little sad for the seals, and birds, since I am sure it would have alarmed them a fair bit at some points, especially when I noted where the guy was actually flying it. Some people arn’t very thoughtful or considerate sadly. When I got back to the car park I decided that, as I was here for dawn, I might as well see if I could stay here the night, since it was literally only a few hours away now. I had been told by several people that they don’t really check, and indeed, on my return to the camper this morning at that car park, I had noted there were ‘no overnight camping’ signs.. (Oops didn’t see those when I pulled in all bleary eyed last night!) and no-one had knocked on my door to move me on from there. As I sat pondering this decision, I realised there were a lot of cars gathering, so I just waited it out. The cars building turned out to be boy racers, and though no-one bothered me (I have always found these kids to be pretty respectful) it was quite alarming at points hearing them. This was by far the noisiest gathering I have ever experienced, with lots of chatter, loud music, constant revving of engines, and the roaring of their cars as they raced up and down the long road to this spot. If anyone complained, or tried to move me on tonight – for quietly sleeping in a dark corner, keeping my space clean and being respectful- while all this was going on, I’d certainly be arguing the point! Because the youngsters were not bothering me, I managed to doze, and even sleep a little until, at around 1am, I realised they had all gone – then I finally fell fully asleep.