Along our stretch of coast we are fortunate to have a few places where you can get alongside, behind or above breaking waves, or all three at once. This is one such place, above Millook Haven, on a corner of the steepest through road in Britain. It was taken out of the car window as there was horizontal rain blowing on gale force winds at the time.
This is the arrival of the swell for ‘Atlantic Take Four’, as the surf forecasting site MagicSeaweed has dubbed it, the fourth massive storm system of early 2014.
The cliffs in the background lie between Bude and Widemouth Bay; from left to right they are Compass Point, Efford Beacon, the Upton cliffs, Philip’s Point, and Upper and Lower Longbeak.
Incidentally, marginally right of dead centre of the photograph, you can just make out the top floor of a building on the cliff; this is where we used to live before we moved to where we live now (which is off to the right of the image).
Millook Haven, Bude, Cornwall, UK
Camera: Olympus E-M1
Lens: Olympus M 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.7 II
Focal Length: 75mm
Aperture: ƒ/5
Shutter Speed: 1/1600s
ISO: 200
The combination of spray and rain made this a hazy and very low contrast image out of the camera. Color Efex Pro's Pro Contrast filter is ideal for pulling out the detail in this sort of situation though I had to do a little masking in order to stop the image becoming too unbalanced in certain areas (particularly the shadows). The monochrome conversion was done in Magic Bullet Photolooks with some curves adjustments.
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