Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Published 2010

ISBN 9780711231115

Hardback : 113 pages

Price: £16.99

Signed copies can be obtained directly from the photographer at his website. I am grateful to him for allowing me to use his images for this post. I have not altered them in any way other than to adjust their size.

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I have been walking along the Wales Coast Path for just over two years. It’s not that I am such a slow walker; I am still in full time work, so need to fit in sessions when I can. I started from Chepstow, which, officially, is the end of the path. And as I live near Chepstow it was easy for me to go there on the first day of the formal opening of the Wales Coast Path in May 2012.

I started a blog about the walk after this first day and have been writing about the path and photographing it since. To date I have walked over 600 miles of the path and have posted over 40 blogs.

I did not start walking the path with the intention of doing the whole of its nearly 900 miles but I soon got hooked. I will do it all. There, I have said it. I might even complete it this year but early next is more likely.

p78 6.6 p74 Caerfai Bay op

By inclination I am a fair weather walker. I do, though, enjoy the experience of being out in all weathers.  I passed on the possibility of a few days in last winter’s gales which pretty well wrecked Aberystwyth. And to date I have not walked in heavy frost or snow, but so far those opportunities have not coincided with my possibilities or inclination. Walking in a stiff wind is incredibly exhilarating if you have the sea crashing and thrashing about nearby but it is quite hard work.

If it’s raining (and it often rains in Wales) I am reluctant to get my camera out but I will unless it is torrential. My Canon G15 is a good compact but doesn’t have the same weather tightness or the bulk of my Canon 5DMkII. With this professional quality camera it is my lenses which weigh far more than the camera and when I am walking up to 15 miles a day I really don’t want to carry more weight than is absolutely necessary.

p43 WC new Abersoch MMFC0044 small op

Professional photographers know that the best light, that which can help create beautiful images, is usually at the beginning or towards the end of the day. These are the times that I am in the garden when I am seeking to take professional photographs of gardens as I did a lot of the time, for instance, when photographing for “Discovering Welsh Gardens”. From the outset I decided that I would not try and take “professional” images to illustrate my blog posts. When you are walking all day and in all weathers you get the light that you are given. So apart from the few times when I have camped on the path, I am in bed when the professional would be poised with their tripod, patiently and often vainly waiting for that magic light.

p103 8.1 p100-101 Dunraven Bay op

I have though, set my camera to record “Raw” (unprocessed) images and I process the images myself. By processing the files myself I am basically substituting my brain for the camera’s. Cameras do a good job of working out what looks pretty good on the screen or in print. With a lot of time spent clicking and tapping, I can make a better job of it. And I can choose to crop images and often do with seaside views, to give a more panoramic sense of the view. I don’t consider this to be “cheating”, though at times I have made skies look more interesting than they did in reality and I can and do boost the contrast in images to give a more intense appearance.

In photographing “The Welsh Coast”, I can guarantee that Peter Watson spent a lot of time standing by his tripod, waiting for the magic light. And as a result he has taken many beautiful images.

Winter sunrise over Port Eynon Bay (pages94/95) is a good example of the early morning vigil.

p94 7.11 p97 Port Eynon op

The lovely  sun on the horizon at West Angle Bay (page 75) could only have been achieved at sunset.

p82 6.19 p84 West Angle Bay op

At Barmouth, he stayed on beyond sunset to get a lovely image of the new moon high in the sky above the orange glowing horizon (page 57).

p57 4.6 p49 Barmouth Bay

I admire the craft and the dedication in such images. Some of them are particularly well planned and thought through.

It was very clever to get the lighthouse at South Stack on Anglesey lit up and echoing the setting sun (page 31).

p31 2.11 p 28 South Stack op

Mostly the images in the book are broad seascapes, but I liked that Watson also shows us the beauty of the rocks close to, as in several images on pages 78 and 79 and again in pages 102 and 103.

p79 6.5 p74 Pwll March op

It is the sky and the beaches which inevitably prevail in this book and this may seem very harsh but mostly, though accomplished, the images are also, banal.

In common with the vast majority of landscape photographers, all of his images are taken on fine days in the best possible light. Nearly every image is taken with the subject in focus from the nearest to the furthest point. Nothing is portrayed as anything other than beautiful or picturesque. Even the sea’s froth is shown as a rainbow coloured delight.

Overall, then, this book presents a completely unreal picture of the Welsh Coast. There is no sense of how different weather conditions change the landscape. Man’s impact on the coast is presented as shots of lighthouses, moored boats and pretty seafronts. Even the flotsam and jetsam of the beach at low tide does not get a look in. There is no sense of the photographer saying anything about the coast other than “everything in the garden is rosy. “ And if you look at any one of my blog posts you will see this is simply not the case.

I, too, like to make beautiful images. And I will put my hand up to being as guilty as Watson when it comes to my commercial photography of gardens, which give an equally unreal sense of those spaces. But at the same time I am really quite uncomfortable about this idealization of the coast (and our gardens). It seems to me to be no different really than the idealization of the way that women are portrayed in commercial photography and I think that there is something at least distasteful and at worst quite destructive about how photography is used in this context.

If this book leads you to wish to visit the Welsh Coast, what you are likely to feel if you sought out the same views as Watson offers is disappointment. Unless you get up at the crack of dawn on a bright morning they won’t look as good. And like as not you’ll realise that the scene is not quite as perfect as it appears in the book.

To illustrate what I mean, here is the lovely shot of Watson’s of the little church at Mwnt in Ceredigion.

p58-9 5.4 p60 Mwnt op

It’s perfect, isn’t it? That perfectly placed patch of clover in the foreground, the early morning light illuminating the end of the wall of the church, that beautiful sky.

This was the direction that I approached the church from when I did the walk, and I took this picture from the path.

Penbryn_to_cardigan_-47

Quite a nice shot, in very flat light though even from here I thought it was shame that someone had stuck that caravan in the field.

But as I approached the church, its visual context changed.

Penbryn_to_cardigan_-50

To allow easy access for all  to this pretty spot, the car park is situated less than 100 yards from the church.

And that’s not all. Because in the next field, the council in their wisdom have allowed the landowner to build an ugly house and establish a caravan site.

Penbryn_to_cardigan_-52

In the little shop and cafe just below the car park you can buy postcards of the Church. Maybe even one of Watson’s pics. But none show the car park or the caravan park.

The Welsh coast is amazingly complex and interesting.  But it is not a one-dimensional picture perfect paradise as Watson portrays it, but a complicated environment where man has had a dramatic impact.

The remnants of the coal and slate industries and other mining activities are mostly now positive contributors to the visual amenity of the coast. I have found pleasure in the sight of power stations and the jetties carrying oil and gas pipelines to the shores of Milford Haven. All these are entirely absent from this book. But we have also filled many of the best parts of  the coastal environment with hundreds of static caravans and allowed many of its towns and villages to become filled with shabby, ugly houses and these views are also absent from Watson’s book.

What we are offered by Watson is the Welsh Coast through rose-tinted lenses. Yes, we should be able to celebrate this often beautiful coast.  But to only show us the beauty is both to mislead and to ignore just how fragile it is and how vulnerable  to our neglect and abuse.

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