Botallack Tin Mine in Cornwall

Continuing my exploration of Cornwall in the far southwest of England, we visited Botallack Tin Mine. This is pretty close to Lands End – the most westerly point in the mainland UK and if ever you visit, do yourself a favor and avoid that! Pretty touristy to be honest and there is nothing particularly special about standing on the most westerly part of a country to be honest.

Tin mining is one of those traditional industries in Cornwall for thousands of years – the first known mining activities were around 2150 BC and the two counties of Devon and Cornwall provided most of the tin, copper and arsenic for the UK right through to the end of mining in the 1990s. Tin exists in small narrow seams that need to be found and then followed deep underground. The deepest mine was over 3500 feet below the surface (1067m) and many went out under the ocean. A perilous task, indeed. The remains of the engine houses that both pumped water out of the underground tunnels and also lowered men (and boys) down the main shaft can be found in many places along the coastline. The ones at Botallack are particularly nicely situated for photography!

This is a standard “record” shot that anyone standing on the path could take, and I wanted to get something a little more artistic. But first, I wandered back around the old ruins on the hilltop. I was intrigued by the way the cloud formations were creating what looked to be smoke from the old chimney stack.

Not altogether realistic, but perhaps close enough at first sight! The buildings surrounding this is quite impressive as well – lots of traditional arches built from the local granite.

As I headed down the hill to the cliff edge, I noticed a local family on horseback out for a ride along the coastline. What a perfect place to live and experience such sights every day!

This is posed as a family picture, and I provided copies for them.

For my more artistic images, I decided that I wanted to create more of a moody historic feel to the photographs of the mine buildings on the cliffs and so I used a special filter that appears almost opaque to really slow the shutter speed down. The first shot of the mine buildings above was taken at 1/250th of a second and of course, everything, including the waves, are sharp and crisp. With this filter in place and a small tripod sitting on the cliff edge, I was able to slow this down to about 4 to 6 seconds. Everything that is fixed in place is sharp, but the moving elements, mainly the sea, blurs over that extended exposure. This is a view down into the cove with the mine workings on the hillside:

I then moved a little further back to take this wider view of the scene and made it perhaps a little dreamier in the editing of the colors.

I think this one is my personal favorite of the images I took that afternoon. Of course, I would have loved to stay there and see how a sunset (or sunrise) would look from this location, but on vacation, you have to move on. Perhaps next year!

I did notice when discussing this image that there is actually a couple laying on the grass by the rocks to the left. I had wandered down towards that small path leading to the rocks, but there is a 20 foot section where the cliffs fall straight to the sea on either side of the narrow footpath and it is slightly undercut as well. Far too risky for me! This intrusion into my photograph will be removed for the print for sale in my online store!

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