Daren Cox

Landscape, seascape and astrophotography based in Cornwall. Exclusive and selected prints available to purchase from my website.

02/05/2024

I don't get out much these days, but when I do, I get up at 3am to drive to Haytor on Dartmoor for a 5am Morris dance. 😁 (hello strangers! by the way). Thanks to the wonderful Beltane Border Morris!

15/06/2022

June's full Strawberry Supermoon set against the greenlit St Michael's Mount (no, I did not colour it like that; they lit it up 😆).

The castle colours remind me of the West End show Wicked 🧙‍♂️

St. Michael's Mount
BBC

06/05/2022

The D A R K S I D E of the M O O N.

Well, not quite.

We can't see the 'dark' side of the Moon from here on Earth, as it's always turned away from us. But here's the next best thing, a crescent Moon with Earthshine showing its face in shadow.

The Moon is an easy subject to shoot even in a big city with lots of light pollution.

In fact, the biggest problem people face when photographing the Moon is that it's too damn bright compared to the dark landscape and it usually ends up as an over-exposed bright white dot in the shot!

There are 3 ways a budding moon photographer can deal with this:

1. Depending on the cycle of the Moon, shoot it at either dusk or dawn when there is still some ambient sunlight illuminating the land. That way, a single exposure can capture both. You'll need an app to predict the Moon's position for this as it changes daily.

2. Shoot the Moon against an equally bright subject, like an illuminated building, church, castle, or even a skyscraper.

3. Shoot the landscape or subject at its best exposure setting. Next, shoot the Moon at its best exposure and blend the two images in Photoshop (or similar).

Of course, sometimes it's just nice to stand in your backyard and howl at the Moon to scare your neighbours too 😆🙌

05/05/2022

E A R T H S H I N E

Evening, if you looked to the western sky at dusk on Tuesday evening, you would have seen a beautiful 8.2% lit crescent moon with "Earthshine" or "planet-shine" sunlight reflecting off the Earth onto the Moon's darker half illuminating it.

I took this shot at a 'secret' 😏 beach not far from Newquay that is tricky to get to as the route down is pretty dangerous, especially in the dark, and it's easy to get your exit cut off by the tides.

About the shot.

This is a comp of 2 shots, I took a closeup of the moon and enhanced it a little before adding it back into the foreground shot. All the moon detail is as per the shot, nothing further added.

Camera: Sony A7R IV

Moon, 1200mm, f13, 1/10th sec, ISO100.
Beach, 12mm, f11, 6 sec, ISO100.

Blended in Photoshop and ColorEFX

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24/04/2022

Has anyone been to see Godrevy lighthouse on the opposite side of the bay to St Ives? It's a beautiful area with great beaches.

But here's a nighttime shot of the lighthouse and island you don't normally see with the Andromeda galaxy overhead.

Here're some 'mind blown' 🤯 facts about Andromeda to consider whilst getting stuck into your Sunday lunch today.

Andromeda is our nearest neighbouring galaxy, home to about a TRILLION (that's 1,000,000,000,000) stars and it is some 2.5 million lightyears away 😅.

That means we are seeing Andromeda as it was 2.5 million years ago because that's how long the light took to get to us from it (and yes, that's the *nearest* galaxy to us, there are hundreds of billions more galaxies in the universe!).

Also in the shot are the dwarf galaxies M32 and M110, which look like small fuzzy stars to the left and right of Andromeda.

In the distant future, around 4.5 billion years from now, our own galaxy, the one we call the Milky Way, will collide with Andromeda as it's approaching us at a mind-bending speed of 68 miles per second, the result will be a super galaxy called, maybe you already guessed it, 'Milkdromeda' 😂.

However, the distance between the stars in galaxies is so vast that it's unlikely to cause any stellar collisions, so no need to worry about our Sun being hit by another star from Andromeda!

Details about the photo.

On dark, clear nights, you can see Andromeda's bright core with the naked eye, or binoculars as a faint star-like smudge if you know where to look.

But for the best results, you need to take a very long exposure shot from a camera (or multiple exposures and stack them together using special software) which is what I did here to make Andromeda really pop 🤩

22/04/2022

Happy Friday folks!

This is my take of one of the most photographed places in Cornwall, high up on Bodmin moor.

These are the Colliford Lake dead trees under an early evening spring sky.

They are all that remain of a small forest plantation and farm that once inhabited this valley until it was flooded to make a reservoir in the early 1980s.

I used a star glow filter to bring out the most prominent stars. You can see the giant red Betelgeuse (top middle), above the tallest dead tree is the blue star Bellatrix, below and left are the 3 stars of Orion's belt, below them the smudge of red is the Orion Nebula in Orion's sword and to the far right the star Aldebaran the eye of the great bull in the constellation of Ta**us.

I shot 3 sky pics without a tracker for 7 seconds at 50mm and the foreground for 30 seconds at 15mm and brought them all together in Ps and PtGui.

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astronomy.daily

23/08/2021

After a long old summer break, I'm getting back into photography again and it feels good! Got this shot of the full 'Blue Sturgeon Moon' last night at St Michael's Mount.

Not the biggest moon I've shot there, but still nice clear skies so had to be done!

Hope you're all well and have had a great summer break. What have you been up to?

I'm now looking forward to some decent Atlantic storms blowing in, although hopefully, we'll have a few more weeks of good weather to help us through those long winter nights ahead 🌊💨

18/07/2021

The Song of the Sea Cave

Nanjizal, or Mill Bay near Land's End is one of those super special places that has caught the imagination of travellers for centuries. The name alone sounds like something out of Narnia 🦄

The last few nights have been awesomely clear and I ventured out Friday at sunset with my Astro gear to capture the Milky Way at this spot.

I found this particular composition after scrambling around in the dark, slipping ankle-deep into clear, glass-like, water-filled rock pools so many times that I just gave up trying to stay dry in the end 😅

The shot was taken with an Astro-modified camera which seems to have picked out the pinks in the granite rock seams above the cave entrance. Not completely natural, but I liked the effect.

For those that have read my other post's, you'll know I'm not the keenest being out in the dark by myself (yeah, the irony), but this place has a great feeling about it and apart from a few small stones being thrown by unseen hands (pixies no doubt), all was good 😁

03/07/2021

I took this short timelapse video of the Milky Way rising over St Michael's Mount on the same night as the photo.

Something to help chill the nerves before the big match ... 😅

02/07/2021

THE CASTLE AT THE CENTRE OF THE GALAXY

Hey folks!

Seems like ages since I was last out shooting stars, the 'Cornish Monsoon' season has really taken root recently!

But Thursday night/Friday early (very early!) morning was the perfect opportunity in between cloud and moonrise.

I decided to revisit an old favourite, St Michael's Mount, with my Astro-modified camera that picks up the red gas clouds in the night sky.

Some say the Mount is situated on a powerful Earth energy (Ley) line running across the country from Cornwall to Norfolk, but this night, it appeared at the very CORE of our galaxy, the Milky Way! 😁

By the way, if you want to get a free postcard print from my Man and the Cosmos collection, just click the link below and follow the simple steps:

👉👉👉 https://www.darencox.com/sign-up/

09/06/2021

Hey folks, it's summer FREEEBIE time! 👍

As a follower of my FB page, you can claim your FREE A5 postcard print of one of the most popular photos from my "Man and the Cosmos" collection.

Just click the link below and follow the simple steps to get it:

👉👉👉 https://www.darencox.com/sign-up/

Terms and conditions:

Be quick, I only have a limited number of prints available!

04/06/2021

PSYCHEDELIC SKYLINE

Last night was looking promising.

The forecast was for 0% cloud on my weather app so I headed out at midnight to my favourite haunt at Kynance Cove to shoot the Milky Way.

The moon was not due to rise until after 3am, so I had from midnight until then to get some shots.

Arriving at Kynance, the sky looked very promising. I could see the Milky Way from inside the car, which is about as good as it gets! I packed up my stuff and headed down to the cliffs to set up.

I had already decided to use my 'astro-modified' camera that picks up the reds in the night sky, but what i didn't bank on were the greens, blues and purples too!

Just to be clear, this is not how I saw the Milky Way from the top of the rock, the camera sensor picked up all the psychedelic light 🥳 But the Milky Way was as clear as a bell and beautiful to watch as it slowly traversed the sky.

Have a good weekend folks whatever you're doing!

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https://www.darencox.com/

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