David Noton On Location
Mupe Bay, Jurassic Coast, Dorset, England. 14:42pm. 3 January 2020.
Get off the beaten track and find hidden locations with David this month
David heads off the beaten tracks and shows that it's not what, or where, you shoot, it's how you shoot it that really matters
Mupe Bay is a magnificent and secluded part of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, made extra special by the fact it’s only accessible on foot when the Lulworth Range Walks are open. The firing ranges which surround Mupe Bay are home to the British Army’s Armoured Fighting Vehicle Gunnery School, all of which lie within an official
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. That may seem incongruous, but actually the Ministry of Defence has proved a highly effective protector of this Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1940. While a few burnt out tanks co-exist with grazing sheep and spent ordnance pockmarks the landscape, the coast itself is scenic and untouched.
Although only two miles from the tourist hotspot of Lulworth Cove, Mupe Bay seems a world away. The reward for the hike is a spectacular view encompassing steep, sheer cliff faces and a bay curving gently round Warbarrow Bay and the Purbeck coastline stretching all the way to St Aldhelm’s Head. It’s a scene I have photographed many times, but I’d never really captured a picture which I truly thought did the location justice. At times I’ve had gorgeous light, sometimes moody skies, and occasionally churning seas, but never the three together. And so my mission was clear.
It’s early afternoon as I stumble over the shingle of Lulworth Cove. There’s 90 minutes to go until sunset, but the winter sun is low in the sky to the south west. This is the best time of the day, and year, to be shooting this scene, so I’m rushing, as usual.
I frame up my composition. This time the shapely and near perfectly circular sweep of the bay below is the main feature attracting me. Its curve leads the eye to the headland and triangular rock in the middle distance, then the cliffs beyond. What’s more, waves are radiating out in the cove below, before breaking on the beach in a way which remind me of a physics lesson on diffraction. There’s also an attractive cloud-draped sky above, and I can just about include the first-quarter moon in the top right-hand corner of the frame.
The sun is still obstinately hiding behind cloud. The cliffs in the distance are illuminated, but the cove below is in shade. I shoot anyway; more to assess my filtration and the degree of wave motion I’m capturing then in hope of nailing the definitive shot.
The sun appears and I shoot. The clarity of the winter sun side-lighting the scene is wonderful; I’ll not need the de-hazer when I come to process this shoot later, but immediately one unforeseen problem becomes apparent; the line of the shadow of the cliffs, to my right, cuts across the cove below and disrupts the graceful compositional lines. No amount of postproduction trickery will be able to hide that line.
As appealing as the setting and light is, this shoot is not working, at least not anymore – there’s no getting around it unfortunately. But did it work earlier, before the shadow was a problem? I scroll back through what I’ve shot and come to the very first test capture. Maybe… I’m visualizing it now in black and white, all detail and texture. Why? I can’t tell you, it’s just a gut feeling.
It’s rare that the first frames of an afternoon/ evening shoot are the best. I tend to work on the basis that the lower the light the better, but this shoot proves that’s not always the case.
With the cove below now in complete shadow, I pack up and plod over the ridge back to Lulworth. Below the headlands which form the entrance to Lulworth Cove are like jaws, and the sun is setting over Portland. A rainbow appears over Worbarrow Bay. Winter days with muddy boots on the Jurassic Coast; you can’t beat them.
I tend to work on the basis that the lower the light the better, but this shoot proves that’s not always the case