The March 2020 trip to Lundy was very windy, ffffht, but when is it not? Even on a still day at the beaches of north Devon, it is windy on Lundy. So when it’s windy on Lundy, it’s really windy – it’s like being in a viking battle, or worse. The wind claws at you all the time, relentlessly, flapping your hood like a baseball bat, making it impossible to hear or speak and once you find respite, inside, your face glows red with the memory of the burn, but there’s still no escape: The sash windows of Tibbetts rattle all night like a gattling gun letting you know that the wind is still there, all around, and under the door.
Wind is a challenge to photograph, as it is invisible. Doh!
The affect of wind is difficult to capture too. Unless you have a steady hand, a very high shutter speed and a cliche to fulfil – like a girl in a red coat with an inverted umbrella….
Perhaps the best way to describe wind is with words; as soon as I took the photo of the bent black backed gull, the words of this 1957 Ted Hughes’ poem came into my head. I kept on misquoting them in an effort to make my ‘O’ level nightmares recede. The house had been far out at sea all night..
Blinding wet
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Mad eye
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up –
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,
black-back gull bent like an iron bar slowly
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house
we grip our hearts
Hearing the stones cry
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.The wind
Fuji XT3 w/200mm f2 & 16-55mm f2.8
Coming soon : Coos and seals, with deer
“We just sit tight while wind dives
And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo” – Seamus Heaney.
esterspears 
Posted on April 1, 2020
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