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Photographic Diary

It is not until around October that the sun rises and sets on the horizon of the South Coast. It continues to do so throughout the winter until around late March. This therefore is the time to catch those moody coastal sea scapes and provides good lighting for plenty of other shots. There are also less people around which makes getting about so much easier, and the B&B’s are cheaper if you fancy a weekend photographic trip.

I was off to a favourite haunt of mine and many others, Kimmeridge Bay on the World Heritage Jurassic coast of Purbeck, Dorset. Here is a diary of my day, which should provide an insight to others to find their way around the beauty of this fascinating area.

It never ceases to amaze me, no matter how many times I see it, how magical the sight of Corfe Castle is as it looms up in front of you. Driving along the A351 from Wareham, you round the bend, and there she is, nestling on its own hill, juxtaposed between the aptly named East Hill and West Hill. Both East and West Hill rise over 100 meters above sea level and do so very steeply. As you come into Corfe , there is a National Trust car park on your left. This is probably the best place to park. From here, walking in towards the village and turning second left under the railway bridge, (not the first B3351 turning), leads you to the start of a footpath to climb East Hill. Continuing passed the junction leads to the village and access to the Castle itself.

On this visit, I was going to climb West Hill. I had not climbed this hill before so for me it was an exploratory visit. Many photographers have taken the views from both hills. In my opinion the really moody photographs are taken at dawn, in early spring or autumn with morning mist shrouding the dips and hollows towards the sea. Both David Noton and Guy Edwardes have superb examples.

There is a lay-by for a few cars on the road signposted towards Kimmeridge and Church Knowle, opposite the National Trust car park. From here, you can start the climb of West Hill just across the road. As it was December, this lay-by afforded enough space for me to park. From here it is a straight forward climb up, but make sure your footwear is strong with good grip as it is steep and the chalk is slippery when damp. Straight forward is probably an oxymoron, as it is straight up and very steep in places.
Being early afternoon the light was not at its best. As I say, this was more an exploratory visit, stopping off on my way to Kimmeridge, more of that later. Nevertheless the view is spectacular from the top of the hill. Looking North East, you see over Studland, the nature reserve at Arne, Poole Harbour and in the distance, Bournemouth. Looking South East, with the sun at this time still quite high, the Castle and village of Corfe, complete with its Church, provide the vista on over the hills towards Anvil Point. From this angle of view, the scene is bordered to the north by Nine Barrow Down which is an ancient burial site and continues on from East Hill towards Swanage.
Taking my 19-35mm lens, Neutral Density graduated filter and polariser to add a little more impact to the scene, I composed on the view just described. To avoid vignetting, I closed down the view angle a little and shot at F16.

As an alternative perspective, I changed lenses to my 70 - 300, again with the two filters attached, closed down to around 80mm, to produce a scene which I personally prefer.
I was pleased that I had explored this side, providing me with enough information from which to make an early morning visit soon.

From Corfe, it is a relatively short drive along the road, through Church Knowle village before turning left down the dip and into the village of Kimmeridge. Continuing through the village and out via the private road, (for which there is a small toll in the summer months), leads to the bay. Here I turned right and parked in the main car park on the cliff top.

Kimmeridge is a place made for photography.

There are the rocks themselves providing fascinating patterns which, when the light reflects off them, provides beautiful tone, texture and colour. I had timed my visit on this occasion as the tide was going out. This is always the best time from the photographic point of view, as the numerous fingers of Jurassic rock stretch out to sea leaving the wet rocks shimmering, rock pools available and many possibilities. Using Velvia, with an ND8 filter to slow it all down, allowed me to take a long exposure at F22, the resultant colours really stand out.

On previous visits I had taken shots of Cormorants diving and surfacing a few feet from me in the gullies, and there are always gulls other birds around.

In the pools, the smooth, pummelled rocks can provide excellent foreground interest to low, wide angle shots, particularly if you have some good cloud cover available. You can then get the angle to reflect the clouds in the rock pool. Alas on this visit the clouds were not assisting.

From the car park, if you follow the cliff top to the east, you pick up a short footpath towards the headland. This meanders though the bushes, across the stream and down to the slip way. The stream runs over the cliff to provide a small waterfall. (There are a number of these along this coastline, perhaps the best of which is the Egmont Bight, some 3 miles further east near the hamlet of Kingston.)
I wondered what the picture would be like if taken from the stream looking into the bay. There was only one way to find out. Again the 70 - 300 was used, this time around the 80mm mark. I wanted a shutter speed of around ½ second so adjusted the aperture accordingly. No filters were used other than the poloriser, which had little effect from this angle, but did some holding back for the speed.

In retrospect, I should have abandoned the poloriser or at least added a graduated filter to hold back more of the sky and equalise the exposure difference.
Continuing along the footpath leads you to the slipway used for launching boats. The view at this time was not spectacular, but can be, given different weather conditions and/or activity, such as fishing boats arriving. I was more intent given the light, to see if I could capture the waterfall. I was concerned about having to continually wipe the lens, so I spot metered a few neutral places clear of the water first of all before mentally averaging the exposure, which incidentally was ½ stop more than matrix metering. Then, with the 19-35 lens fitted, the poloriser and ND grad attached for the top left corner of the frame, I moved in close with the tripod low to avoid my shadow. I framed and fired. I am pleased with the result.

Depending on weather and tide conditions, sometimes further round the headland, surfers are in abundance catching the waves as they run into shore. I however wandered back onto the main beach. The tide was getting to low water, the fingers of rock were becoming well exposed with rock pools shimmering.

No poloriser now, but still a ND filters attached, mostly an ND4 or ND8 graduated while the sun was still setting. I particularly like the shot framed with the headland peaked by the Clavel Tower. Interestingly, I have spent hours literally since the slides have been scanned, trying to straighten up the tower whilst keeping the horizon straight. This week I have learnt that they are taking down and rebuilding the tower as it has been falling over for years!

I waited until the sun had disappeared to see if there was any after glow, but with little cloud there was none to speak of. Nevertheless it had been a good afternoon and I had found a great deal to photograph.