Snow has been the name of the game recently, with the first week of march/end of Feb, being one that will stick long in the memory, so where best to kick off this blog post than my time down in Cornwall trying to capture just a little bit of this crazy 'beast from the east' weather as it rolled across the UK.

But just to show the change we had down there, the first two images were taken just the day before the weather changed. The skies were blue so I was determined to get down and take a couple of long exposure images of St Michael's mount. (F14, ISO 100, 1/15th)

While on the beach, a couple of horse riders asked for a quick photo, I quickly took off the ND filter, and amended my settings (F/14, 1/200, ISO 100) to capture this of them before they carried on down the beach. 

From this point on though the Weather turned. I was snowed in for a couple of days so took the time to try and get some images of the area around me.

I travelled down the beach, looking for different angles and compositions, as the weather closed in around me.

On one of my visits down to the beach I was determined to take a few images with my 400mm lens. I adore using this lens, and when I get the chance to use it I really enjoy myself and tend to get some really great wildlife shots. These images above were taken on the beach of a Golden Plover. As well as these birds I also took one trip at low tide around to the cliffs. The images below are what I was able to capture with just the 400mm, handheld.

One of my favorite images I captured around this time, was of the Herring gull, (see above) I love how angry and defiant it looks as I crept closer and closer to it, only taking flight right at the last second.

I loved stalking the fulmar nests buy climbing up and across the rocks as the sea began to come back in, giving me only about half an hour before the sea cut me off and these guys were back to being totally out of the reach.

The final images taken on this extended cornwall trip was when all the snow had melted, the sun came out and so, finally did the surfers

Using the better light conditions on this day, I was able to push the shutter speed up to 1000th of a second as well as keeping the ISO levels low. I would simply stand close to the tide line and anticipate when the surfers would try to catch the next wave. All the images were on the 400mm and were again hand held. The beauty with this lens is that although long, it is not overly heavy, so does not impact as much as you would expect when hand held which is great for these sorts of sports shots.

FIN