Lands End Cornwall landscape photography trip - A week of mixed weather and amazing seascapes
I’ve just got back from a week long photography & walking trip to Cornwall staying in a great little barn at Raftra Cottage not far from Porthcurno & Lands End. The barn is situated perfectly for access to the South West Coastal Path, most of our walks around the coastline started and ended from the cottage so we didn't need to go hunting for car parking. The weather throughout the week was very changeable, although getting up to look every morning at 4.15am I didn't manage to get out for any sunrises as there was always thick low cloud far from ideal for landscape and seascape photography. The weather cleared mid morning on most days allowing us to get out and about during the day on the beach and on coastal walks before clouding over again late afternoon putting stop to any sunset sessions. I managed 4 sunset shoots, 2 on the cliffs at Porthcurno, one evening at Porth Nanven and a final quick shoot down on the beach at Nanjizal Bay. We visited many locations which I had hoped to capture at sunrise or sunset during they day so did plenty of location scouting and daytime photography rather than visits during the golden hours.
On the first night of the trip we headed down to Porthcurno Beach for a look around and an evening walk along the south west coastal path. We made our way around to a viewpoint high above Pedn Vounder beach which gave a good view down from Treen Cliff towards the historical Treryn Dinas fort and the famous Logan Rock. Having only brought my smallest tripod getting a viewpoint which included decent foreground interest proved tricky as I couldn't get the camera high enough to stretch out the distance between foreground flowers and rocks, the mid ground beach and in the distance the cliffs. The sunlight dipped quite early behind the headland quickly reducing the cliff face to shade whilst still highlighting the Logan Rock & the headland.
Logan Rock and Treryn Dinas - Porthcurno
The next day the cloud begun to clear mid morning so we headed out for a walk around the coastal path, the first point of call was the fishing village of Porthgwarra, home to a few historical fishing cottages many with amazingly tropical gardens, the flowers in some of the gardens were beautiful and great care had been taken in many of the gardens. We followed the coastal path all the way around to Nanjizal Beach past some amazing coastal scenery. The cliffs below the coastguard lookout station around Tol-Pedn-Penwith have a beautiful array of wild flowers and plenty of sea birds to keep you entertained for a little while.
South West Coastal Path
The small cove of Porth Loe with its shallow tropical waters is the next cove on the walk shortly followed by the large and more spectacular Pendower Cove from Ardensawas Cliff.
The bay of Nanjizal or Mill Bay is a welcome sight as you descend from the coastal path from Bosistow Cliff, the natural sea arch of Zawn Pyg in Nanjizal is quite amazing. The beach here is often empty due to its relatively difficult access, the walk from the nearest road is around 20 minutes so is mostly visited by walkers and hikers on the nearby Coastal Path. As the tide goes out it reveals a beautiful sandy beach and a large sand bank out in the bay from which there were people had landed kayaks to fish from. The conditions experienced at Nanjizal beach at this point in the week were entirely different to those on the final night which is to follow later in this post.
Porth Nanven beach at the bottom of the Cot Valley just outside the town of St Just is a favorite with photographers and one not to be missed on any trip to Cornwall, the ease of access is the main reason for this as you could fall out of the car onto the beach here. Having arrived far too early for sunset we had a walk around the cliffs to look at some of the features and old mining remains. On this particular evening there was only one other photographer on the beach (I was expecting a few more being a Sunday night) who left around half an hour before sunrise missing the best part of both the evening sunset but also the when the tide had receded far enough to begin to expose the best of the dinosaur rocks and the sandy beach. Whilst it wasn't the best sunset of the week the colours in the sky gave a good backdrop to the amazing features on the beach, I had to use an ND8 filter to slow the exposure times and also an ND4 grad filters to hold back the brightness of the sky. Porth Nanven has everything a photographer could need for an evening shoot, a must visit location if you are in this part of Cornwall.
Porth Nanven Beach dinosaur egg rocks
To make the most of another bright sunny daytime we chose to head another way around the south west coastal path towards Porthcurno and the fishing hamlet of Penberth. The walk directly from our holiday cottage took us straight past St Levan Church towards the coast at Porth Chapel beach. The waves on this day were perfect for surfing so and there was a group of surfers on the otherwise deserted beach. The South West Coastal Path takes you directly pass the Minack Theatre on the cliff top, a stunning place to catch a performance, the view from here down to Porthcurno beach is a delight, and would make a great spot for sunrise. Walking around the Treen cliff path takes you around the headland towards Treryn Dinas overlooking the beautifully secluded Pednvounder Beach. Here we had a good walk out to the headland to the famous Logan Rock, the landscape here reminded us of the Isle of Skye due to all the erratic boulder shapes.
View from Treryn Dinas looking back towards Pednvounder and Porth Curno Beaches
The Coastal path runs around Cribba Head to the beautiful National Trust fishing village of Penberth which is a great place to visit with plenty of history to discover and pretty cottages.
Penberth Cove
On what seemed to be the final sunny day of the week we did a 10 mile circular walk from the cottage round the coastal path past Nanjizal Beach towards Lands End, round to Sennen Cove and finally cross country back to the cottage. The landscapes around Lands End are magnificent, you could literally spend days shooting seascape around here, my favorite spot which would have been very accessible from the Lands End car park. I had hoped to get out here at sunset but we never got the conditions for this.
Armed Knight & the Longships Lighthouse - Land's End - Cornwall
On the final day of our trip the weather had been cloudy and rainy all day and we packed up to cottage assuming that would be the end of the holiday. After a full day of rain around an hour before sunset the sky suddenly cleared and the most amazing light show appeared the skies, I grabbed my gear and made the 25 minute walk from the cottage down to the beach at Nanjizal by which time the sun was beginning to soften but the evening sidelight was still picking out the cliffs beautifully. The stormy weather throughout the day meant that the Atlantic was in full force, the size of the waves down in the bay was quite amazing after a week of generally calm waters. The spray from the waves made life really difficult for photography, possibly the trickiest conditions I've had to shoot in. I resorted in the end to using the neutral density graduated filters as a barrier and quickly removing it, taking the shot with the remote release and putting it back in order to get a shot with no lens flare or water droplets. This meant that I had to take two exposures for each shot in order to capture the dynamic range of the scene, one for the sky and one for the foreground and water movement. I had to give up when the light levels were becoming too low as any exposure more than 1 second would were resulting in the lens covered in spray and completely unusable so sat and watched the friendly seals in the bay who seemed to be enjoying the large swell.
Nanjizal Beach - Cornwall
Landscape photographs from this trip to Cornwall will be added to the my other photographs from Cornwall in my Cornwall photography gallery: >>Cornwall Photo Gallery >>
