Dorset 2022

2022 had a lot more photography in it for me than the past few years. With a little bit of travelling and a little bit of just forcing myself to go out a bit more. I don't think I'll ever be someone who is out every weekend taking photographs. Chasing this would take some of the fun out of it, plus I like to decide where I am going and plan my shoot carefully.

With that in mind, here are the three main spots I photographed in Dorset in 2022.

Chesil Beach

In the early part of the year, I decided to photography Chesil Beach from atop Portland. Chesil Beach is a shingle beach that stretches from the Isle of Portland to West Bay, and can be seen in all its glory on good days from various viewpoints along the coast. I decided to go for a classic shot looking down and along it, facing west from a viewpoint at the top of Portland. On a good day, with a good sunset this is a lovely view with the beach stretching away into the background and Weymouth and Portland nicely lit up in the foreground. Unfortunately, whilst the weather was certainly pleasant the sky was boooooring.

I left a little disappointed, but it wasn't until I got home and was idly zooming in on the preview on the back of my camera (just to check quality/focus) and my partner happened to look over and said "that's a nice shot". And it was! It was a heavy crop focussed just on the little line of fishermen and their tents.

I love how small the tents look and the slightly abstract nature of the sea and the patterns in the undulating sand. It was a pure fluke but I'll take it!

Later in the week I ended up down on that beach, a little further along at West Bexington. This is another popular fishing spot and I hoped to get some shots of fishermen with the sun setting behind them. Again, this didn't really work out, but I did end up with a nice pano of a small child seemingly facing off against the waves, with the rest of the coast hidden by the sea spray and haze.

Abbotsbury

As a minor aside, this was also the year I got engaged! We chose Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens as our venue as its a beautiful place and just down the road (and over a hill or two) from us. This means I was also able to take advantage of the free entry for wedding planning purposes to take a few photos!

These first two were taken from the viewpoint at the top which overlooks the Fleet and Chesil Beach, with views all the way to Portland.

And one shot from within the garden itself. If you are a nature/flower photographer you'd probably have a lot more luck than I did, but I did enjoy shooting this lovely vibrant green mess of foliage with a downed tree cutting through it.

Corfe Castle

Finally, in October time, I ventured out to Corfe Castle. You know this place, I'm sure you've seen the photos. The classic view on a misty morning of the ruins of this 11th century castle poking its head out. Well I didn't do that. Not because I don't want to, I'm just farrrrrr too lazy to be getting up that early. One day I'll do it, but this time, I just went for a nice lazy afternoon stroll up the hill overlooking the castle.

I ended up with three slightly differing photos all taken from the same(ish) viewpoint. The first is a panoramic capturing the full view of the castle looking over the village of the same name below. The second was a little before the sun started setting but did have the famous steam train going past, so I couldn't miss that one. The final shot show the difference in light as the sun started dipping and giving off that lovely autumn glow.

And that was it for Dorset this year. I did get a chance to do a small bit of photography whilst on holiday around Norway, and went into the New Forest with professional landscape photographer Mark Bauer, which will all be covered in later posts.