I'm a bit late with this month's featured photograph and, as that is due to me being on holiday for the last couple of weeks, it seems only right that I should post a photograph made during that holiday. There is something of a risk in spending your main two weeks annual leave in Anglesey; I love the place and the coast is wonderful but, if the weather is bad there is not a lot to do. This wasn't going to be a problem for us as we mostly wanted to relax so, stocked up with plenty of films and books, we were set for whatever the weather threw at us. Of course, you will know by now that we were incredibly lucky and had two weeks of amazing sunshine. My legs don't often see the light of day but I wore shorts every day.
We had a fabulous break but there is something perverse about landscape photographers in that they are rarely satisfied with the conditions and such settled fair weather meant I wasn't going to get any dramatic lighting. Even so, I had established that the sun would set behind South Stack lighthouse and that is where J and I headed after a wonderful meal at the White Eagle. The image I've chosen to feature was made just after the sun had sunk behind an annoying bank of cloud on the horizon; consequently, the colours are rather muted. Compare them with the image below (the first I made that evening) where the foreground is lit with a beautiful golden light; the drawback being the unavoidable flare from shooting directly into the sun. Two quite different moods with only something like 20 minutes between them
The previous evening we watched a fascinating program about wildlife photographers in which one of them said that he was nearly driven mad by the noise he experienced during months spent with penguins and I felt I knew a little of his pain in just one evening in the company of thousands of seabirds.
