Not a literal storm, although that would make for a great photo. No, I'm referring to the weekend. Not having to worry about work means we can do a sunrise and sunset on the same day (weather allowing). Last night it made sense for us to do a location that didn't involve a huge amount of walking, save that for the weekend! We checked the weather for the various parts of the Peak, which is becoming somewhat of a ritual by now, it looked good in Baslow so that's where we headed.
We were joined by a bit of a hero of ours, his name is Simon, he was our fantastic consultant at the hospital throughout the pregnancy. He is a landscape photographer himself which was always a welcomed change of subject at our many hospital appointments. He has very kindly offered to come with us on a few of these locations, this being the first.
The walk from the carpark to Baslow Edge, location 21 in the book, was only a short one. We were already at the the start of the golden hour by the time we arrived so had to get a move on. We scouted out a couple of viewpoints and settled on one, there was a lot to choose from for such a small area. The good light only lasted for about half an hour, that wasn't the biggest problem though, the wind was. The moorland heather looked amazing so it was essential to get that in the composition. The wind was so strong that it was almost impossible to freeze its motion with a fast shutter speed without either bumping up the ISO (which can lead to noise in the image) or making the image too dark. I kept waiting, hoping for the wind to die down, but it only got stronger. I am actually quite happy with how the final image turned out, even though the heather isn't perfect. I suppose the motion blur does tell a bit of a story of what the conditions were like, not sure if that's a valid thing in landscape photography though? As pleased as I am with the final image, it was spending the evening with Simon that made the whole night so wonderful.
