top of page

Peter's Stone & Tideswell

Peter's Stone is a massive limestone outcrop just outside of Tidewsell centre, it's an easy one to spot and a fairly easy one to get to. We were here for sunset and were actually a little bit early. Being early turned out to be extremely lucky for us, not only did the sky cloud over just before the sun had set, the stone its self is in a bit of a valley so becomes completely covered in shadow quite some time before the sun starts setting. The composition was a simple one, there wasn't much in terms of foreground interest so we tried to use the grass, I'm not too sure how well it turned out as the light was still quite harsh:

One of the most impressive things about this location was this:

Not the photograph, although it is a cool shot, no, the cool thing is that Tracy took this shot. She is genuinely scared of cows and although these particular cows were behind a wall, the field we were in was filled with them. We waited around (surrounded by cows) until the sun fell behind the hill, with the slightly pink sky behind, it actually worked as a photo better than I expected:

We drove only a couple of miles to the centre of Tideswell, there is a shot in Jame's book that we both really love, it's of the town and church during the blue hour. The blue hour is a short period of time after the sun has set where a small amount of light still exists and it has a blue tint. When that is combined with nice street lights it can really make a street scene look great. The thing that really sets James photo apart is the church and the reason for that is because the church lights are on which really makes it stand out as the focal point. We arrived at the spot to photograph the church and found the composition that James used in the book, it was then just a matter of waiting.

The sun set at 19:45, the blue hour started at 20:07 and lasted about 20 minutes (it's never an hour). The town looked great during this 20 minute window but there was one big problem... the church. For some reason, and I'm yet to find out what that is, the lights never came on. We waited until nearly 9 p.m. but still nothing. We came away with the shot, same composition, similar conditions but the final photo is nowhere near as strong because of the lack of church lights. I plan on emailing the church (if that's a thing you can do) to find out if they still light the front of the building up and if they do, when?

It was a bit of a disappointing ending to the evening but never mind, at least we had crossed off another 2 from the list. We are actually a bit ahead of schedule, it's by design though, I have a crazy couple of weeks coming up with work and so too does Tracy. Fingers crossed we have calculated it right and get all 73 done by 3rd October!

bottom of page