A Photographic Adventure in Rainy Devon!

When I was a small child, the family and I went to Devon. It rained all week and I’ve never been since, until last week. Excited at the potential at getting a photo or two amidst entertaining my youngest and spending quality time with the wife and family, the reality was that yet again, it just rained and rained and rained! We had one good morning of sun, and then it rained the rest of the day.

Like all good British holiday makers, we refused to be rained out of the fun. After spending a few days with a relative in Barnstaple, we headed to Combe Martin and we stayed in a brilliant ‘family friendly’ hotel come B&B called “The Fo’c'sle Inn“. Now, if you’re thinking of going to Devon and staying in or around Combe Martin, I can’t recommend this place enough! Don’t get me wrong – it’s not posh and glamorous, but if you’re a normal family person interested in ‘traditional’ family fun (standard room, standard TV, no Internet gubbins preventing your kids from avoiding actually interacting with you, pool table, juke box, etc) this place is great, and it overlooks the sea directly. We stayed in Room 7 which is on the top floor (thus away from any noise downstairs) and overlooks the sea specifically.

It was from the bay (Coombe Martin Bay) that I shot my only roll of landscapes using Fuji Velvia 100, but what a sequence of shots it was! I rated it at EI50 for additional shadow details, and the result blew me away. When I was photographing the bay I thought some of the scenes I was looking at were nice, but I’d forgot my polarising filters, and the light was not quite as punchy as I’d have liked. Luckily, I had my Lee ND Grads.

When I got the transparencies back, I looked at the CD scans first as I had some other films of family snaps that I’d also had developed. The pictures looked really good, so I got very excited and quickly got out my light box to look at them properly. Velvia is an amazing film. It just makes everything look so vibrant. My 20 and 30 second exposures were as sharp as you like and the exposures looked more or less dot on – just as I had hoped. The sea was milky and looks like frost in many of these shots.

See the low res CD scans below.

From Combe Martin, you’re ideally suited to visit lots of great places. For example, Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park which is great for families and couples alike. Most famously, there’s Shaun Ellis, aka ‘The Wolf Man‘, who’s featured on Animal Planet via Sky and is due to have a new show broadcast on the BBC in September\October 2010. Listening to him is fascinating, and, if you’ve got a decent telephoto, you might be able to get a fairly decent shot of the wolves themselves.

Woolacombe Beach is amazing too. It rained for us, of course, but I imagine on a sunny day it must be amazing, especially for those that surf and like big waves. From a photographic point of view, it’s great for dramatic coastal shots and simple wave like shots, especially if it’s stormy. If it weren’t for my family, I’d have walked off and shot a roll of Acros there as the cloud and rain really suited the scene.

All in all, I really enjoyed my holiday in Devon, though to be honest, it was my family that made it the holiday that it was – if I go again, I’ll wait for a sunny weather forecast! The one evening I got out to take these shots was a treasure for sure though. As a photographer, there’s nothing quite like spending two or three hours on your own, out in the fresh air with just your camera and nature for company (having a dog with you is nice, too).