It had been a rather stormy few days in Cornwall, and as usual the tide times were against me, low tide in harsh midday light and high tide in the late afternoon and early morning. Gale-force winds forecast for the next few days meant photography would be a challenge, and as a result I had adjusted plans accordingly to take in locations where this wouldn't be so much of a problem. My preference for close detailed botanical work was out of the window as absolutely no plant life was static enough to photograph, but there was some potential for long exposures if I could find the right place, Treyarnon Bay seemed an obvious choice.
It was late when I arrived at the beach and already starting to get dark. I easily found a spot and parked up, the sea wind blew in hard, rocking the car slightly as I sat and peered out of the windscreen. Slate grey clouds dominated the sky, save for a thin strip of blue where the sun was still visible over the horizon, bathing the land in a warm, golden light. A few droplets of rain splattered against the window; I realised at that point I had little inclination to do any photography and a better option would be a warm mug of tea and my feet up back at the cottage, but against my better judgement I zipped up my jacket and stepped outside.
I’d decided to walk up the coastal path to shoot the beach from a high vantage point, I carried on up for a while and picked a good place to set up the tripod, but it was barely stable, such was the power of the wind. I was using a recently purchased Fuji GW690II, a medium format camera in 6x9 format, a massively sized negative compared to 35mm film and of course, digital sensors. An obvious product of the mid 80’s the Fuji is mostly plastic and feels somewhat budget conscious (i.e. read cheaply made), but fully manual and with a nice, chunky piece of glass connected to the front (the 90mm EBC f3.5). This, I assume, is the point of the camera, a really high quality lens stuck on a very basic, fully manual plastic body with no metering. I'd been blindly testing it over the past few days as it just arrived from Japan the day before the trip, so even though it appeared to work OK manually I had no idea if it was making exposures with the film I’d loaded.
The wind had reached howling gale level now meaning the relative lightness of the Fuji didn’t help with stability on the tripod. I hooked my bag underneath the ball head, where it swung like a pendulum, shifting violently back and forth despite it’s weight. I composed the shot quickly, noting the required shutter speed with my light meter, ‘1/8th of a second should do it’ I thought. I made one exposure but felt the camera move slightly as I pushed the shutter button, bugger, I’d need another to make sure. As I recomposed again I noticed to my surprise a lone figure heading out to sea, just outside the Fuji’s viewfinder framelines, surfboard under his arm, purposefully wading into deeper water. My initial bemusement turned to anger, and I wrestled with the ‘do I want a figure in my landscape?’ question. I waited for a while but he wasn’t moving much, getting any further out to sea or actually surfing, he just remained static in the middle of the frame, bobbing up and down in the surf. Obviously the conditions were too difficult and dangerous, and I wondered what possessed him to try and surf so to near dusk in a hurricane, perhaps it was normal for Cornish surfers? but it seemed ridiculous to me. I took the shot regardless, which felt a lot steadier this time, the man was still there, but I reasoned I could edit him out with a content-aware fill in Photoshop; then no trace would remain.
I packed up my gear and made my way up onto the coastal path to walk around to a more secluded section of beach, hoping for a good vantage point with no more people in the way. When I reached the edge of the cliff and looking down I noticed to my dismay a thick slurry of brown foam had completely covered the rockpools. The wind blew pieces of it up the cliff face in small, dirty clouds, momentarily visible before disappearing over the carpark beyond. I can only assume from the sheer area it covered that someone had thrown a bottle of washing up liquid into the sea as an amusing prank. I imagined the destruction this would wreak on the flora and fauna below, 'everything down there will be dead' I glumly said to myself, what might have made for an interesting image now a vista of foamy waste.
I turned around and made my way back to the car, drawing my hood up tighter to keep the rain out. As I followed the path up again I looked out one last time over the bay, the surfer had gone now, either swallowed up by sea or presumably packed in and gone home, I hoped it was the former, but really I had no way of knowing. I still think about him from time to time.