Mumbles Lifeboat and House

Landscape photography often takes an evening or so of careful planning to recce a location, checking on things such as sunrise and sunset and tide times, picturing an image you want to achieve in your mind and then deciding on the gear you’ll need to take with you.

And then sometimes, just sometimes, a photographic opportunity arises from nowhere.

I was driving back from a lunchtime meeting with an old friend in Mumbles recently when I saw the late afternoon sun was just catching Mumbles lifeboat house in Swansea Bay.  An added bonus was that the lifeboat was also out at sea catching the same rays.

I quickly pulled into the car park by the famous “Big Apple”, got out and captured the image you see below.  No tripod, no remote release and no filters.  What you see is essentially straight out of the camera save for a letterbox crop which, I think, gives the image a minimalist, almost fine art feel.  The sun is really lighting up the lifeboat and its house.

Yep.  I got lucky that day.

Fujifilm X-T20, Fujinon 18-55mm f2.8-4.0 lens at 55mm
1/140th of a second at f11, ISO 200
handheld

A reminder then to carry some sort of camera with you at all times.  You just never know when that surprise opportunity might arise.