These photographs were made last month on the Fuji x100v with its single 23mm lens during a series of walks at Prawle Point, Devon’s most southerly point. Projecting into the English Channel between Bolt Head to the west and Start Point in the east, its lofty promontory has served as a vantage point since ancient times and, appropriately enough, the word ‘Prawle’ is Old English for ‘lookout’. This was my first proper welcomed time away from my home in the suburbs of London since March 2020 staying in one of a row of coastguards cottages built by the Admiralty in 1903. I was at no 7, three days with my teenage daughter followed by four on my own.

My companions became the sea, cliffs, coves, and inlets, the rocky outcrops interlaced with rich yellow gauze and further inland the fields starting to burgeon with wild flowers and crops. I walked the rugged sometimes precarious coastal path running in each direction, the beach at Macely Cove a favourite, despite being the most difficult to access. A solitary coastwatch station, which stands 200 feet above sea level, quickly became my 'many-times-daily' focus and compass point for my walks out east and west from the doorstep.

The Coastwatch station is manned by volunteers who maintain a watch day and evening for emergencies at sea and a contact point for emergencies on shore. Over the years Prawle Point has gained a fearsome reputation as a ‘shiptrap.’ In the last century, for example, no less than seven merchant ships were wrecked on the west side of the Point. There are a few wrecks in my pictures floating on the shoreline, things of beauty in themselves and with their own dramatic story to tell.

Stories of the wrecked ships off Prawle Point.

I do not consider myself a landscape photographer; I photograph people - but in this mostly remote and people-less landscape, the time of day, the ever changing weather, the light, colour, sound and movement are the inspiration to take pictures. Photographic opportunities are endless here, even just within a mile or so radius from the cottage which is mostly as far as I ventured. My ‘Car’ (she’s female by the way) stayed parked for four days, but had a majestic view of the sea so I think she was happy.

I had no aims. Only to walk sometimes with the camera and most definitely sometimes without it. I had no agenda, no brief, no deadline or purpose. Just to walk, stop, look, take a picture and repeat. Life pared down. My pictures are random. Somethings and nothings of this beautiful, wonderful, therapeutic place… perhaps the beginnings of a personal record I might make ongoing. Photographs in black and white and with no consistency in that because I wasn’t working. A mish-mash because that says it all of my photography and of me!

I used Kevin Mullins’ wonderful and addictive presets for some of these. FP4 Matte Paper and Acros Fade 3200 for many, moving between the two to enhance those ever changing moods in the landscape - sometimes quiet, flat, serene and calming; sometimes gritty, contrasty, dramatic and stirring. The colour (below) was mostly left as it was.

Happy Springtime everyone! Anna

Follow Anna McCarthy also on Instagram.