Returning to Lulworth Cove just as the sun was starting to set, I decided to wander a bit more in the area and see what other natural wonders Dorset would reveal to me. In my years as a travel photographer, I’ve learned that sometimes the best photographs are the unexpected ones, images made of places that you never intended to find.

Single shot, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 29mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 32 seconds, ISO 200, ND 5-stop filter, tripod.

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Near Durdle Door, I found one of those places. The small, horseshoe-shaped cove ringed by Man O’War Beach was a place I had somehow managed to miss earlier in my trip. Now I found the small inlet lit by the fading sunlight of a late afternoon, a pink haze falling over the horizon. I was grateful to see it colored by sunset.

I made my way down the cliffs and onto the pebble beach. I knew there were other travelers nearby; I could hear voices and traces of laughter in the distance. But I felt very much alone, as if I were the last person on earth. This wasn’t melancholy; I was perfectly at peace and content to be alone, to see this small sliver of England’s coast without the distraction of other people. At the end of what was sometimes a challenging trip, those blue hour moments at Man O’War Beach were an unexpected coda, serene and lit by a fading sun.

After wandering in Swanage for several days, I made my way to Lulworth Cove, another picturesque spot along England’s Jurassic Coast. In a particularly scenic bit of England, the scallop-shaped cove and its pebble beach are an especially lovely place.

Single shot, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 24mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 42 seconds, ISO 31, ND 5-stop filter, tripod.

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The cove, like the rest of the Jurassic Coast, was formed thousands of years ago. It’s believed that the cove’s formation began roughly 10,000 years ago, carved out of the coastline by the relentless power of water. And the coastline there is still changing, its chalky surfaces continually eroded by the sea and the passage of time.

Close by the cove is one of the area’s most beloved landmarks, Durdle Door. The door is a natural limestone arch that rises almost vertically out of the water, its creation the result of softer rock being gradually worn away by the sea until this bit of the coast was pierced through by the sea. Scientists estimate that the arch was formed some 140 million years ago. It boggles the mind.

The logical part of my brain understands how this process worked. But there is something about this part of England that encourages illogical thinking, something that draws my mind into fantastical places. Arriving at Durdle Door early in the day, before the inevitable tourists and hillwalkers, I again found myself imagining the area inhabited by sorcerers and druids, casting their spells and telling their tales underneath a night sky. Along this ancient stretch of coastline fossils emerge from time to time, gradually revealing the landscape’s history. And walking in this antediluvian country, it isn’t difficult to get lost in reverie, imagining a world far removed from the temporal realm.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up reading the Arthurian legends, but for me, the English countryside and its jagged coastline has always inspired images of sorcerers and high priestesses from another time. There is something about the deep green of the landscape — seemingly untouched by modernity — blanketed under a veil of mist that brings to mind Morgana Le Fay, using her incantations to both protect and bewitch men.

Single shot, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 36mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 13 seconds, ISO 31, ND 5-stop filter, tripod.

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It isn’t difficult to find oneself bewitched by the Dorset coast. It isn’t often that you come face to face with that kind of physical manifestation of history — millions of years’ reflected in the chalky white of Dorset’s cliffs. The Old Harry Rocks have eroded in places over the millennia, but it’s still a striking sight, and the knowledge that these formations have stood along the southern coast of England for more than 60 million years leaves me awestruck.

I came back to the Old Harry Rocks each morning for several days, hoping to capture in a photograph something of the mystical quality that England possesses for me. I approached the rocks from different angles, careful to notice changes in the light and the way that it fell on the faces of the rocks. From any angle, the rocks were a brilliant white against the blues and greens of the country’s coast, and no matter how I approached them, their magic held.

One of the legends surrounding the name of the Old Harry Rocks is that the Devil (once referred to as “Old Harry”) took a nap on the pinnacle of the rocks, and locals bestowed the name in his honor. But I think I prefer my own myths of the rocks — I like to think that among these ancient formations there once dwelled high kings and enchantresses, and that their whispered incantations still linger in the mists.

In the summer of 2018, I enrolled my children in an English language school in the United Kingdom. I accompanied them on the trip in case they had any problems that might warrant a parent’s attention. And because I was traveling to a beautiful part of the world, I had my camera and equipment in tow. Fortunately, my children adjusted well to their classes and there were no issues, so I was free to explore the southern coast of England and Wales.

Single shot, additional exposures for highlights, focal length 40mm, aperture f/11, shutter speed 15 seconds, ISO 64, tripod.

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While in Dorset, one of my primary goals was to photograph the Old Harry Rocks, ancient sea stacks formed by the buildup of microrganisms over many centuries. These ancient formations are believed by scientists to be perhaps 65 million years old.

From Swanage, where I stayed during that part of the trip, it took me roughly and hour and a half to reach the rocks. Part of reaching the rocks involved walking along a steep, narrow coastal path. During my stay, I walked the five mile distance every morning, as if I were reporting to a job. I hoped to capture the striking chalk towers in the ideal early morning light.

On my third day of making the steep hike, I found the rocks washed in the delicate colors of first light. The stark white of the rocks is striking against the deep blue of the sea, but that morning I found both rocks and water suffused with the delicate hues of sunrise.

With only a trace of the previous night’s mist, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine an ancient, distant world of kings and sorcerers. There, on the jagged southern edge of England, I had the sense that only a thin veil separated me from that world of magic and mysticism, and that if I had arrived perhaps moments earlier, I might have caught a glimpse of its ephemeral denizens.

But this part of the world is a landscape of mysteries and ancient beauty, and my time there was just beginning.