Seaside Views

-

Today was about capturing Cornwall's most dramatic industrial landscapes—engine houses perched impossibly on cliff faces where raw Atlantic meets Victorian engineering. From the fog-shrouded hike up Cape Cornwall to the half-hour spent working compositions at Botallack, this was the photography I came for. The day ended perfectly in St. Ives with harbor views, exceptional food, and live jazz, a fitting celebration of Cornwall's ability to blend natural beauty with human ingenuity.

Industrial Architecture Meets Raw Nature

September 18, 2025

Started the day hiking up Cape Cornwall. The weather was foggy in the distance, but the views were still beautiful. You can see Land's End from there—I could actually make out the lighthouse through the haze. There's a tower on top donated by the Heinz Company, though I'm not entirely sure why. The granite plaque was nearly illegible, so the story remains a mystery.

In a nearby field stands St. Helen's Oratory, a small medieval chapel with not much left of it. Just enough to hint at what once was.

Botallack
Then to Botallack. This is what I came to Cornwall to photograph—spectacular, dramatic views of pump houses perched impossibly on cliff faces. Industrial architecture meeting raw nature in its most striking form. I spent about half an hour trying to capture "the shot of the trip." Maybe I got it, maybe not. It's going to take some post-processing work to know for sure, but the process of working the composition was rewarding in itself.

Lunch at The Counting House café in Geevor. Our server had a gorgeous voice and a pleasant manner that made the meal memorable for more than just the food.

We took the afternoon off before heading into St. Ives for dinner at Porthminster Kitchen, overlooking the harbor. Perfect air temperature, excellent service, and food that lived up to the view. One of those evenings where everything aligns.

After dinner we walked around the harbor, then found The R Club on Market Street—a jazz club where we sampled various cocktails and relaxed to some pretty decent jazz. The perfect way to wind down a long day of chasing dramatic coastal views.

Back home and to bed. Tomorrow we pack up and head back to Thornbury, with a stop at the Eden Project along the way. Cornwall has delivered everything I hoped for and more.

Pictures can be found here: https://beloretrato0.picflow.com/d43bka91mw/596x079x55

Location: Zennor, Saint Ives TR26, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Humanity Worth Saving?

-
Image
It's an interesting question given humanity's propensity for shortsighted and self-destructive decision making.  Glibly, the answer is no.  It's not worth saving and should get exactly what it deserves.  It is not earning its way as a responsible contributor to the universe.   That, of course, begs the question of what does the universe want? Other than a few fantasies that we've crafted it's unclear. We have values as humans such as order, beauty, and joy.  Science is the objective pursuit of discovering order in the universe.  Beauty straddles a line between the objective and subjective.  Much of what is considered to be beautiful are objective observations with subjective assessments.  Joy is entirely subjective and tends to be generated by the orderly and beautiful. These are potential self-centered reasons for humans to continue to exist, but in an of themselves don't answer the question of what the universe wants. What does the universe...
Read more

Understanding

-
One of the more entertaining aspects of the current conversations around AI is how much it challenges what we've believed, perhaps for centuries, about the nature of thinking. We've discovered that we don't currently possess objective and testable definitions for words like sentience and consciousness.  For reference, here are a couple of current definitions... Sentience - feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought. ( Merriam-Webster ) Consciousness - the state of understanding and realizing something. ( Cambridge Dictionary ) Words like feeling, sensation, perception, thought, and realizing don't add a lot of value and tend to make definitions circular, but if you distill them you end up understanding as a component of each.  "Understanding" is a word worth exploring. Just for reference here are some of Merriam-Webster's definitions of the word " understand "... : to grasp the meaning of : to grasp the reasonableness of ...
Read more

Identity

-
I recommend the book ... Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment  by Francis Fukuyama In fact,  I'll even elevate it to the status of Lonnie's Core Educational Books that everyone should read.
Read more