A Splendid Sunset on The Moors
My efforts to catch sunset shots on the local moors usually end in one of two ways;
- the sun vanishes quite early behind the ever present fog bank over the Irish Sea, sucking all of the colour and contrast from the world.
- there are absolutely no clouds leaving very little to catch the colours of the setting sun.
It is therefore a very rare treat up here to have the Goldilocks conditions of broken cloud cover overhead combined with a totally clear horizon to the West, but on Wednesday I was fortunate enough to experience just that. I also experienced the absolute worst swarm of midges I've ever encountered during my 56 complete orbits around the sun. This was less fortunate.
Midges aside, I was treated to superb conditions on the moors and had such a nice time working my way over Black Coppice and along Black Brook that I lost track of time and didn't make it to my intended destination of Great Hill before sunset, instead having to make do with the Drinkwater's farm ruins, which is not a bad plan B, but I would have liked to have seen the sunset from a higher vantage point.
All images taken handheld with the Nikon Z7 and either 24-70 f/2.8S or 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 VR S. Processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23. A Kase Wolverine magnetic CPL may have been used in some of the 24-70 shots.
1. A Meadow of Himalayan Balsam
Although it's horrible invasive stuff that destroys the native ecosystem wherever it takes root, it does look nice when in bloom. There seems to be quite a lot of it down in the Goit valley at White Coppice. This shot was taken just before I ascended Black Coppice. I had planned to take a few speculative shots from the top of the quarries up there, but ran into another photographer who came up the hill behind me. We had a brief polite conversation, like a pair of nervous gunslingers circling each other with their hands hovering over the trigger and then he set up his tripod in the spot I'd been heading for, effectively claiming the location as he waited for sunset (this was about two hours before sunset!), so I set off on my way as I'd planned to reach Great Hill for sunset anyway and can always return to the quarry another time.
2. The Mormon Temple
I rounded the top of Black Coppice and set out down the path above Black Brook. The path gradually descends to a crossing point further up the stream where you can cross to the Heapey Moor side, but as I headed for that point I regularly stopped to look back downstream and spotted this composition of the Mormon Temple at Chorley North.
3. Black Brook
Having crossed to the other side, I followed the path along Black Brook into the section where the sides of the gulley rise quite sharply. At this point the stream is quite narrow, but fast flowing. This is again looking back downstream and on the hillside in the distance you can just see the Hawthorn tree at Coppice Stile.
4. On Heapey Moor
Eventually the high ground on the Northern bank of the stream falls away and reveals Heapey Moor. Here, I've come a little way above the stream and am again looking downstream. Once again, that the Coppice Stile tree on the distant ridge. I'm not a big fan of the way these sapling protectors look, but backlit they become a bit more interesting.
5. Sunset at Drinkwater's #1
By the time I'd drawn alongside Drinkwater's there was no way I was going to make it to the top of Great Hill before the sun set, so I decided to cut my losses and just explore different compositions around Drinkwater's as the sun went down, so that's exactly what I did. I negatively bracketed all of these shots (0,-1,-2EV), but in the end used the one I'd manually exposed for with the histogram which had enough highlight recovery to retain the colour in the sky.
6. Sunset at Drinkwater's #2
The sky lit up beautifully as the sun went down and was a delight to watch. What was less fun was the swarm of midges that had decided I offered a buffet opportunity not to be missed. My entourage had been building up as I made my way up the river and by this point stopping for even a few seconds was enough to become coated with a thick film of the damn things. I've really never seen so many of them and they were starting to interfere with my shooting, so I ended up donning the net hat that's been sat unused and unloved in my kit bag for many years and this made the whole experience a lot more tolerable, although it did nothing for composing through the viewfinder and, as I found out the day after, it didn't dissuade the midges from chowing down on my arms, which were are still full of itchy bites as I type this. Ergh, horrible. Anyway, here's the shot, I think it was worth it.
7. Sunset at Drinkwater's #3
As the sun sank below the horizon, the underside of the clouds were vividly lit in a red glow. I moved further out into the moor for this shot to capture more of the sky. The original 3:2 image contains more of the clouds, which perhaps looks more dramatic, but I prefer this 2:1 crop.
8. Blackpool Tower and The Isle of Man
After the sun had set I headed back across Heapey Moor towards Coppice Stile and noticed the brightly lit bit of cloud behind Blackpool Tower, so I popped the 100-400 back onto the camera and framed up on it. At this point I realised that the distant "clouds" were in fact the Isle of Man, more visible than I've ever seen it from the moors, so reframed a bit wider to get more of that into the shot. I'm really impressed with the 100-400, it is so sharp at all focal lengths and the IBIS+VR on the Z7 works incredibly well, it's almost in Olympus territory here with how easy it is to handhold at relatively low shutter speeds. Again a 2:1 crop as the higher part of the sky was completely clear.
9. Desperate Measures
The humiliations I have to suffer to get these pictures. When I took the previous picture I was leaning against a post dressed like this as a couple passed me. I nodded politely and gave the obligatory greeting of "evening", then continued shooting. I'm not sure what they thought as they wandered off, although it occurred to me, why was I the only one being attacked by all the midges? Oh the humanity!
10. Twilight at Coppice Stile
By the time I reached Coppice Stile it was pretty dark. I was still being assaulted by midges, so I didn't have much time to plan this shot or experiment with different exposures. In order to get something vaguely hand holdable I underexposed it quite a lot and brought the foreground back up in C1P. I think the foreground could do with being a touch brighter, but I'm pushing it as it is and it starts to look unnatural against the sky if brought up too much. There used to be a nice composition here from the other side of the wall, but a recent initiative to put up information signs at some of these lost farms has ruined that due to the placement of the huge sign. I've actually cloned it out here, but that wouldn't be an option from the other side of the wall, so that's a shame, but I quite like this vantage point, so all is not lost under the right conditions.
Right, got to pack for an impromptu day trip to The Lake District, so I'll have to skip the usual proofreading step on my posts and just settle for fixing anything I spot later.
