Cold Snap in The Peak District

This winter the weather hasn’t been very wintery here. In fact, I think I can count on one hand the number of days that we’ve had a proper frost. Then the other day I saw freezing overnight temperatures forecast and decided to head over to the Peak District to meet a friend.

We met at Higger Tor around 7:15, well before the sun was due to rise. The temperature was down to -3C and as I drove up the frost was clearly visible on the rather slippery road. I’ve always wanted to shoot frosty conditions there, but something has always prevented me.

Initially, we headed up to the far edge of the Tor where we normally shoot. But then we decided the frost didn’t look as good. Further back towards the road the frost was much heavier, covering the rocks and heather and turning them white.

I made my first few shots facing towards where the sun would rise, and I could already see the sky turning orange there. The sky was quite bright in comparison to the foreground rocks, so I used a 0.9 Reverse ND Grad. I thought this would help control the sun as it neared the horizon, without needlessly darkening the rest of the otherwise clear sky.

As I stood and waited for the sun to rise, I turned around to see the image above. The light was beautiful, and the landscape looked soft with thin mist in the valley. I quickly switched my reverse grad filter for a 3 stop soft grad and managed to capture this image.

I hope you like it.

Photoshop Masking Problem

Recently I’ve noticed an increase in the number of photographers on my Masking Courses who are experiencing problems. Typically, they will try to create a mask, or a series of Luminosity Masks and the results are wrong. They follow my advice exactly, but it doesn’t work correctly. What makes this problem even more frustrating is that it appears inconsistent and can start to happen without you making a change.

Following a lot of head scratching and working with a few people, I’ve been able to identify the cause and importantly a solution. If you edit photos in Photoshop and use masks, you need to look out for this happening to you.

To see the problem together with the fix, watch my video “Photoshop Masking – How to Fix this Common Problem”. This really is bizarre and was very difficult to track down.

If you use Photoshop or know someone who does, I hope this helps.

Have a great weekend.