It’s Friday again and I’ve spent the entire week trying to layout the print version of my latest book. The desktop publishing software I’m using launched only recently and I’m hitting quite a few bugs. Given how frustrating this is I decided to stop to share an image instead.
I shot this last weekend at Curbar Edge in the Peak District and there are a few points I want to highlight:
- This is around 15 minutes after sunset, which is fast becoming my favourite time. The bright white dot in the sky is the moon. There’s something very nice about the light after sunset.
- The sun set immediately behind me which dramatically reduced the dynamic range of the scene. Even then I used a 0.9 (3 stop) Soft ND Grad filter on the sky.
- The heather in the scene looks great but it’s dead. The reason it appears pink is because of the magenta colour of the light. That’s what happens shortly after sunset when you place the sun behind you.
The key takeaway for me from this image is that it pays to understand how light changes depending on the time of day and angle. It would have been all too easy to have stopped shooting after sunset, or even have faced the wrong direction.
I hope you like the image and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Just entering ‘blue light’, a magical time.
It certainly is.
Good Light, we were there a couple of weeks ago, no decent sunsets but still beautiful.
One question, I am curious, I see you have used ISO 160 on your XT2, I have that camera but understood it was best not to go below 200. can you help here? I always try to use the lowest and that to me was ISO 200 my old Sony DSLR was ISO 100.
Thanks. The X-T2 was a typo. The image was shot on my X-T3 which has a base ISO of 160. Thanks for pointing it out.
Beautiful image. I saw that you used the Samyang 12mm lens. I have a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens that I love. Given the clarity and look of the 12mm you used, I may have to give that a look also. Thanks for sharing.
I have owned two Samyang 8mm Fisheye lenses for different cameras and they were both wonderful and very sharp. It was those lenses that convinced me to try the 12mm and I’m so pleased that I did. It feels just like the Fisheye to use and really is a Joy.