Apologies, that song will now be in your head for the next hour at least! The weather forecast looked good for a sunrise and with the heather in full bloom, the time was right to head to Higger Tor, location number 15. It's just over an hours drive from home so we had to set the alarm for 3:45 a.m. We stumbled out of bed and got ready, it's all a bit of a blur to be honest, but we managed to get in the car and drive to the lay-by. The walk from the car to the viewpoint was really short, only a few minutes (thankfully). There were 5 or so other photographers already there, initially I was surprised, it was mid-week, but given the short walk from the lay-by and the abundance of vibrant purple heather it made sense.
There was a strip of cloud just above where there sun was going to rise and a lot of compositions to choose from, we settled on a simple one. As sun started to rise, the clouds lit up orange and red, it was gorgeous. The lack of light on the heather bothered me but it was certainly worth taking the shot, just for the clouds if nothing else:
Shortly after, the sun was high enough to cascade light across the heather and rocks, you can see in the following two photos how much of a difference it makes:
The could hung around for longer than expected. As the sun continued to rise we must have looked like a pair of crazy people running around the top of Higger Tor trying to find other compositions. The one that we settled on in the end was this one:
The little puddle of water in the bolder really makes the photo, the heather looks amazing and the sun hadn't got too strong just yet. It was definitely a successful morning, what was really cool was that we met a couple of photographers that already knew who we were!