Heather (like many flowers) is a funny thing to photograph. Unlike many people expect, direct light, especially harsh light doesn’t do it any favours. But at the same time, if you don’t have enough light the colours don’t come to life.
In recent years I’ve found the best time to photograph this wonderful flower is just after sunset.
At this time ,there is still enough light to make the heather glow but not enough to cause problems with contrast. It’s also helpful to face in the opposite direction to where the sun has set. Then, instead of the light appearing orange it will have a pinkish blue tint. This again accentuates the heather and I’m sure this isn’t the only flower where this approach works well.
I shot this image using a Fuji X-T3 with Fuji 16-80 lens at 16mm. It was a tripod-mounted exposure of 1.6” at f/14 and ISO160. I also used a Kase 3-stop soft ND Grad filter on the sky.
I hope you like the photo and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Heather is subtle–and gorgeous. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you
Hi, Robin,
Do you happen to have a second choice for ND Filters that is less expensive than Kase?
Thank you, and as usual, lovely picture!
Barbara
I’m not very up to date on different filter choices. After I switched to Kase I haven’t used any others. I used to use Lee and they were generally quite good but I kept scratching them because they were resin rather than glass. I also have a friend who uses Nisi glass filters and he thinks they are great. The trouble is, glass filters are generally expensive. I also had some HiTech filters once which were very good but I’ve also had some of their filters that were quite poor. I’m struggling to recommend a cheap alternative that I’ve had a consistently good experience using.