Earlier in the week, I headed to the Peak District for some landscape photography.
I love this time of year for photographing the landscape; at least I do when it isn’t raining. But if it’s cold and frosty, the conditions can be excellent. Sometimes, the cold weather will bring a freezing fog, but on other days, it will produce what I call clean light. And so it was on this particular morning.
I arrived at the parking around 15 minutes before sunrise. This might not seem like much, but I had two reasons:
- The location wasn’t more than 300m from where I parked the car.
- The area is quite low-lying compared to the surroundings. The sun must climb a little in the sky before reaching the ridge on the horizon.
When I arrived, I already had a shot in my mind that I wanted to capture and went for that first. After I was in position and had fired off a few test shots, I noticed the colour in the sky was building. I checked my watch, and sure enough, it was sunrise, although the sun hadn’t yet come into sight. Then, after a further 10 minutes wait, I captured the shot I had come for.
This is a 1/6 second exposure with the XT5 camera mounted on a tripod. I used a Fuji 10-24mm lens at 10mm, an aperture of f/8.0 and ISO125. I also had a 3-stop reverse grad neutral density filter over the sky to help balance the exposure.
What pleased me most about this shot was that I had waited almost five years to capture it. I first visited this location at sunset in January 2019 and realised it had a lot of promise. After that, the conditions were never quite right to produce the clarity of light and colour that I wanted. That is until now.
But finally capturing this scene in great light wasn’t the end of it. Nearby was an old Silver Birch Tree that I had photographed many times. That also held great promise but had never delivered. Finally, my perseverance paid off, and I captured this photo.
This was captured using the Fuji XT5 and a Fuji 10-24 lens at 10mm. The camera was mounted on a tripod for a shutter speed of 1/15 second at f/7.1 and ISO125. I also used the 3-stop reverse ND grad filter on the sky.
I hope you like this week’s images and have a great weekend.
