Nohoval Cove

I went someplace today that I've never been to before - Nohoval near Kinsale. My SatNav for some peculiar reason wanted me to go in the direction of Mallow so I had to pull over near Carrigaline and enter a nearby village - Ballyfeard - instead. And on the way back the bloody thing took me down some roads that were no more than glorified dirt tracks full of gaping potholes. They might have been fine had I been driving an Abrams M1 tank instead of a Ford Mondeo.  So much for SatNavs. I think I'll stick to the good old road map in future.

Anyway, at the end of a very narrow road I came to Nohoval Cove and I knew then the journey was worth the effort. (For those that are interested, the XY Coordinates are 573383/551414 - you can search for it on the Ireland map on www.osi.ie). There was one other car parked in the narrow parking space and I could see a man lugging a tripod and a camera bag up a grassy path in the distance. This turned out to be Pascal Lee of the Carrigaline Photographic Society and he is a very fine photographer indeed - you can see some of his work here: http://www.carrigalinephotographic.com/gallery.html

I made my way up the path to the precipitous cliffs on the east side of the cove. I used my 17-40 L fitted with a Lee Grey Grad on the Canon 5D Mark 11 to take this shot:

   
Back down along the cove (that's a reference Bob Dylan fans will appreciate - think "John Wesley Harding" 1967) I met Pascal again. He told me he was making exposures using a 10 stop ND filter. That prompted me to use my B+W 10 stop filter and the following was the result (20 seconds at f/9):

   
 The long exposure renders the sea as smooth as glass, an effect I like a lot. Thanks for the idea, Pascal.

This is a place I will return to again and next time I will be wiser as far as the route to and fro is concerned.