Nearly Living Life at the Top

I imagine it not to make the adrenaline rush through the veins as much as trespassing along some of the cities mammoth rooftops, but it was as close as I could get with my beautiful, nauseous, pregnant girlfriend in tow and I paid around $60 (for the two of us) for the privilege. Which in my eyes was well worth it.

New York attraction, Top of the Rock is far from the highest point of the city, but I’m led to believe that it’s the second highest viewing deck that’s open to the public. The other being the Empire State Building. Why would I choose the second highest and not want to visit the ESB? I did my research, about a day before we left!

Early Morning Wake Up Call

What I thought was the biggest downside of taking my mum to the airport for a 6:30am flight actually turned out to be a positive.

My mum hates to be late. For anything! She just doesn’t deal with it well, and the old saying “better late than never” doesn’t seem to comprehend. Family holidays usually started with my mother being slightly more than a little bit stressed out as my brother and I were always quite happy plodding along, leaving important tasks to the last minute. We didn’t do it on purpose. It’s just how we worked, even when we tried.

Now my mum gets to go away by herself but I’m relied upon as a taxi service. It’s one way to repay her for the numerous times that she taxi’d me. This meant setting an alarm for 3:15 to give me enough time to get to her house for half past and get her to the airport which is about an hour away.

The sky was already starting to get lighter and in a sleepy haze I managed to check the sunrise time. I had time. I grabbed the camera with the intention of dropping her off and heading somewhere to catch the sun slide above the horizon.

The car journey involved a mostly one sided conversation. not that I don’t like talking to my mum, but I was concentrating hard on staying awake alongside avoiding the early morning HGV drivers who were likely to be pepped up on coffee and Red Bull.

The short stay car park allowed me up to 20 minutes for the unreasonable sum of £1. But rather than just kicking my France bound passenger out, I walked her into the terminal. I took full advantage of my allotted time limit, with a possible gamble of paying the next rate on the extortionate parking scale.

With all that over with. The sky was light, but there was still no sign of the sun. Brilliant. I ate a banana for some early morning energy and headed down to the riverside.

I’d only ever been on the banks of the Severn on the Welsh side. In this instance, that’s really where I should have been. As I looked at the river, stood between the two Severn Crossings, the sun was rising over my right shoulder. Not reflecting on the water, and with minimal clouds I was starting to think I should have just gone home back to bed.

A bright red glow emanated from the horizon. None of the photo opportunities that I had in my head presented them selves so I had to make do with what I had to work with.

Abstract or artistic photographs presented themselves to me. A fallen branch of a tree that had washed up on the shore had been stood up in the rocks. Providing a vivid silhouette, it drew a lot of my attention.

There was also the grass. I’ve taken sunrise photos once before that stick in my mind. I took shallow depth of field, artistic grass shots then too.

The serenity and silence of the riverside was fading as early risers began to appear on bicycles and with dogs. Time to pack up and head home where, despite my best efforts, I had to resort to going back to bed for an hour or three.

 

Getting High

The older I get, the more I seem to fear things, and my fear of heights seems to grow in waves but is generally overcome fairly easily. Once I’ve plucked the courage to look down, it passes and I’m fine.

Looking down from the roof of Newport’s Kingsway car park got the blood pumping, or I should say, kept the blood pumping after the walk up the stairs. It’s not that high, I lost count after 4 flights of stairs, but while it’s far from the highest building in Newport, it almost provides a nice view of the city and it’s the most accessible. It was really nice to chill out up there.

It’s views like this that fuel my passion for getting higher. I love seeing photos of towns and cities from up high, from rooftops, or tower cranes, but I lack the knowledge or bravery to do it.

I remember a few years back, I was passing through Swansea while the Meridian Quay tower was close to its 29 story completion. I must have driven and walked past the building no less than 10 times, looking for an entrance that would take me up to no doubt spectacular views. A broken chain link fence was peeled back slightly from the post, just enough for me to slide through. I was in the confines of the building site. This was risky and my heart was racing. Luckily, this was a few years ago, I was slightly fitter and the stairs were less of a problem. Unfinished concrete stairwells didn’t give off the luxury feel just yet. I carried on cautiously up the stairs, listening to every little noise. The crunching of grit under my shoes, the echoes of each footstep. I think It was floor 6 I got to. CLICK. Then a beeping sounding every few seconds, the kind of beep I instantly associated with an alarm. Had I triggered something? Would I get to the top floor, capture the views over this “pretty, shi**y city” and head back down in time before the hounds were released? It was doubtful. I headed back down the stairs double time. Back out of my chain link hole and casually back onto the street. I kick myself to this day. I don’t think there was security on site, very unlikely that there were hounds or killer bees to catch me and I just know that the views at the top would have been stunning. Trespassing in the UK is not a criminal offence to my knowledge, but with the amount of people around who are out to steal metal or tools, how can you prove that you’re not just out to do that? It beat me.

One day I will get really high.

Reconnaissance

Prior planning prevents poor perfomance. It’s a phrase that I’d heard of and not really lived by or worked to, but after taking this photo, I wish I had done.

Not that you can  really tell from this image, but the green/white swirling vortex of doom is just on top of a fallen drystone wall. I had driven past this location previously and immediately got an idea for this photo. An orb that would have looked like it had knocked the wall down on it’s mischievous path. Rather than carry on diving as I did, I should have stopped and reviewed the area.

A few days later, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, I had just finished taking some photos of a nearby tree silhouetted against the fading evening sky. Great, it was dark enough for some light painting.

Parking the car in the closest possible spot I could to the fallen wall, I scanned my torch over to my intended location.  The path to the wall I needed to take didn’t exist because it was covered by a mass of ferns and brambles. Wearing shorts seemed like less of a brilliant idea now, and not only because the the temperature had dropped.

Despite all that, I am quite happy that I went ahead with this shot and am fairly pleased with the results. Fighting my way through the foliage, with the red and blue lights as illumination, that didn’t illuminate, I got to the fallen wall. Every rock and boulder was loose and it was scarily close to a barbed wire fence and I could almost feel the imminent broken ankle. There was not a chance I’d be spinning an orb.

Next time I find an interesting location, I’ll check it out in the daytime first, when I can actually see. Fumbling around in the dark is not something anyone is happy doing.

Sky Fall

As much as I’d like them to be on par with the explosions in movies based upon a certain British spy, I really like this small collection of photos I took during some stormy weather along the coasts of Cornwall. Did you know I went there recently? I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it.

Capturing the waves hammering the rocky coastline at just the right point made it look as though clouds had fallen straight from the sky and stopped just at the waters edge.

Sky Fall @ Lizard Point

Sky Fall @ Mulion

Sky Fall @ Porthcurno