My last photographic outing was under anything but ideal conditions of hazy midday sunshine so this time around, I headed to a familiar location to photograph at golden hour - late in the evening in the middle of summer in the UK. Higger Tor is a shapely hill in the Peak District near to a popular trail head called Surprise View close to the town of Hathersage. Higger Tor is flanked by a smaller neighbour called Carl Wark, the summit of which contains historic fortifications. Carl Wark was the destination in mind as it affords views back to Higger Tor, and the setting sun provided side light at a suitable angle to pick out detail in the foliage and rocks and to provide texture to the scene.
I was using 4x5 sheet film, Kodak Ektar 100. I like this film as it has wide latitude. It can take 4-5 stops of overexposure, and perhaps 2 stops of underexposure and still yield perfectly usable results, unlike transparency film. It's obviously important to get your exposures right but it's nice to have a buffer for those times when the perfect moment arrives but the lighting has changed. When working with manual controls and a handheld light meter, making changes takes time, and it's easy to miss the moment. It's also handy when you misread the light meter and put the wrong shutter speed on the camera, which I may have done on at least one of the three sheets I exposed.
If I'd say anything about the conditions this evening, it would be the amount of green fern leaves that were clothing the hills. It will be interesting to make another visit in late Autumn to the same spot as I'm sure the scene will look very different.
The Second image I exposed was of the same scene in portrait orientation, as I wanted to include more of the sky in the shot. Despite the image being made just before the sun dipped below the horizon, the sky was still quite blue which was quite unusual I thought.
All in all then, a pleasant evening of photography. You can see the images being made in the accompanying video on my YouTube Channel - link below.
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