I could have started nearly every single blog post from the last 10 days with "the weather was overcast", it's less than ideal but we have to work with what we are given. High Wheeldon is location number 37 in the book, it's in the Buxton area so only 30 minutes or so away from home. It's only a short ascent too, although it is quite steep! The location is basically a big hill with a trig point at the top, it has 360 degree views all around although the most interesting viewpoint is facing towards Chrome a& Parkhouse Hill.
We had the location to ourselves and although the weather was overcast, there was a small gap on the horizon which the sun was due to drop below (have a look at an app called PhotoPills, great app for photography). Knowing where the sun would appear in 25 minutes time, we had opportunity to try a couple of different compositions out. You can really see how overcast and threatening the weather was that evening, Grace was keeping an eye on it for us:
Chrome & Parkhouse hill are just out of shot to the right. The composition we had setup for the final shot was to have the trig point on the left, the setting sun in the middle and then Chrome & Parkhouse on the right, a good plan and it looked good in camera.10 minutes before sunset we were joined by a group of Chinese students from Sheffield university, they were very friendly and talkative but seemed quite unaware that they standing in front of our camera. Never mind, these places are here to be enjoyed by everyone, it just meant a last minute rethink and recomposition to keep them out of shot. The sun dipped below the blanket of thick cloud, it lasted only for about 60 seconds so we had to be quick to make the most of it:
It wasn't what we had planned but it still works, just having that little bit of foreground colour really transformed the shot. Once the sun had set the students were on their way back down the hill, we stuck around for a bit longer just in case there was some more colour to come (there wasn't). The most infuriating thing was that the students had left some of their litter at the top (they had a few beers), we packed that up with our stuff and took it with us. Heroes.