I mentioned visits to both Port Isaac and the Lost Gardens of Heligan on my Thursday Doors post a few days ago, saying that both are really popular these days (and a visit to a garden was not really about doors).
Port Isaac is a famed fishing village on the north coast, while Heligan is one of those places on the south coast of Cornwall – near the china clay mining St Austell and not far from the Gardens of Eden ‘biomes’ – where the climate is temperate enough for the exotic plant species, that were collected by the intrepid plant explorers of the Victorian age, to grow without the protection of glass.
Like many tourist honey pots, both are difficult to get an angle or viewpoint that hasn’t already been Instagrammed to death in either of these places now, so I was in two minds whether to even bother taking my camera. The websites of the places and a quick online image search will pull up so many familiar looking pictures very quickly and I just think ‘What can I possibly do that’s different and shows something you haven’t seen before?’
But I did take my camera with me on these days and it turned out they were both beautiful, sunny and warm spring days. So I took a few pictures anyway, because I just like taking pictures but of course I try to avoid the straight brochure shots that are in the guides and on the websites.
Heligan
Port Isaac
As usual, click any picture on the Galleries to get a larger slide show.
I don’t buy into the “photographed to death” spiel. YOUR photograph, MY photograph will be different and personal to each of us and different from everyone elses.
My wife always wants to know why I take photos of the flowers in our garden year after year. Because one day I’ll take one that will blow me away. Because the light was different from last time. Just because I can.
Great shots by the way. Glad you took your camera.
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Thanks Mike.
I think what I’m getting at is you have to work a little harder mentally to get out of the ‘snap’ mindset and find something different amongst the familiar. That can be difficult when you are as much a tourist, herded around on walkways and set routes in these places like Heligan, as everyone else.
Anyway, yes, I hope I still find enough of my own takes.
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You succeeded!
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Thank you Candia, we went to Heligan to procure our local residents special rate passes, so we’ll be going again throughout the year.
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Went last year and took some green slimy pond pictures with pink rhoddies and ferns- that school of aesthetics!
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