Whenever a big storm hits Cornwall from a South Westerly direction then the swell is sucked into Mount’s Bay and Porthleven is a focus for big waves. The most spectacular surges are at high tide and the one the night before would have been when the Hercules Storm was at its height.
I arrived at Porthleven to shoot the high tide on the second day of the Hercules Storm when the swell had very slightly died down but was still huge and awe inspiring.
Having arrived early it was still dark so at first I was only able to take long exposures of the swell hitting and overtopping the harbour walls.
It was very hard to get a steady shot with the wind so strong, though things got a little better as the light improved and I was able to drop the exposure time down from a minute to shorter durations, in this case 10 seconds.
I love the moodiness of these long exposure shots, even if they miss the drama of the big waves, as seen in the earlier post ‘The Hercules Storm’.
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