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.