It’s Friday again and I’ve managed two days photography this week. The reason, besides the weather not being too bad, is that the heather is out.
Both shoots were in the afternoon and both in the Peak District. The first was Bamford Edge where I captured this shot. The other was near to Surprise View, but you will need to wait to see those images.
Before I explain a little about how I captured this image I should mention the accompanying video.
Landscape Photo Editing Workflow – The Miniseries
With my latest book in proofreading, I decided to take advantage and publish a video showing my editing workflow. To do this I used another image from the same evening shoot as this one. But rather than publish a long video which may be hard to watch, I’ve broken it into a small series.
There will be four videos in total:
- Assessing the image.
- RAW Processing
- Nik Processing
- Special Effects
I’ve already released the first two and I’m planning to do the other two next week.
If you want to watch the videos, here’s a link to the playlist on YouTube. And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel.
Friday Image No.225
I shot the image for this post around 5-10 minutes after sunset and up until this point, I had been struggling. Because we were facing towards the sun and the contrast was high, most of my shots had a harsh look that I didn’t like. It was only once the sun had set below the horizon that I was able to capture the dynamic range and open the shadows. Even then I needed to use a graduated ND filter (0.9 Soft) on the sky.
Another advantage of waiting until after sunset (besides lowering the contrast range) is that the heather glows and comes to life. This isn’t always the case, but if you are facing towards the stronger light, it works well. Turn away from the light and the heather looks grey and lifeless.
In terms of the shot, this is a single image captured using RAW on the Fuji X-T3. I used a 0.9 Soft Kase Grad filter as mentioned. I also had the camera mounted on a tripod and used a cable release. The image I used for the video is like this one and I used the same approach if you want to know more.
I hope you like the image and videos and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Robin,
Your last two are classics. I was due to go to Snake Pass this week-end and couldn’t make it however, seeing your pic I have made up my mind to go to Hope valley next week-end!
Thanks Norman. The heather should be good for a couple of weeks yet I think so please try to make it over there. It’s great at this time of year.
Your images are always awe inspiring. I need to head to the North country and the lakes here in Michigan and get to work.
Thank you for the link to your videos
Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say.
Great image! I love how soft the light looks. The split-neutral density and your post work did the job. Keep up the great work.
The softness was created by photographing after the sunset and a few tweaks in post-processing. Great to hear you like it. Thanks.