Heading inland

Award-winning photographer David Chapman continues his series exploring Cornwall’s Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty with a visit to West Pentire

The West Penwith AONB takes in all of the coast from Clodgy Point, near St Ives, round the tip of Cornwall as far as Mousehole. It also encompasses much of the higher ground inland of St Just, Morvah and Zennor. There are plenty of beautiful coves and hamlets with parking and cafes to visit along the south coast including Mousehole, Porthcurno and Porthgwarra. The wild west coast has some old favourites including Land’s End, Sennen Cove, Botallack and Geevor all of which have parking and facilities. On the north coast Zennor is good spot to park. The coast of West Penwith has many classic viewpoints and is a photographer’s dream-come-true, but I feel it would be too easy for me to focus my article on the coast, I wanted a bit more of a challenge,

Last autumn I was asked by Holly Berwick from the Penwith Landscape Partnership to lead some photographic workshops. This partnership was formed in 2014 by a group of community organisations and aims to ‘support the understanding, conservation and enhancement of the Penwith landscape as a sustainable living, working landscape’. Their projects include working with volunteers on a wide variety of tasks: improving access to the huge range of archaeological sites in the area; helping the local farming community to plan for a prosperous future; promoting wildlife conservation and to ‘increase awareness of the Penwith landscape, and the important relationship between the landscape and the local culture’ through communication and interpretation.

I think that’s where I come in. Photography is a perfect medium for communicating and informing about the landscape. It can also, when done well, inspire, encourage and motivate people to become interested in the environment.