Unexpected Weather In The Peak District

Last week, the Peak District’s weather forecast was for mist and fog first thing in the morning. However, all the signs pointed towards excellent photography conditions, with broken clouds replacing the mist mid-morning. All the weather forecasts agreed.

The following day, I got up early and made the journey, meeting a friend around 8:00 a.m. We decided on 8:00 a.m. because it would just be light, and with it being foggy, there was no chance of a sunrise. Hmm!

Here is the first photo of the day I shot when we arrived.

There was no sign of fog anywhere, at any point or time in the day. As I got out of the car and looked around, all I could see was a great sunrise developing.

Although this shot looks like I caught the sunrise, we were too late for the best light. We ended up heading down to Lawrence Field, as it was the quickest point to reach from the parking.

I shot the scene using a Nikon Z7ii and Nikon z24-120 lens at 24mm. It’s a 1/5-second exposure on a tripod at f/13.0 and ISO64, a single RAW exposure without any filters. The Z7ii’s ability to capture such a wide dynamic range is remarkable.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, I had to quickly change my mindset. I arrived expecting mist and fog, with the sun breaking through later. Instead, I had an excellent sunrise and needed to hunt for suitable compositions quickly. I know we landscape photographers need to react quickly to changing light, but this was completely unexpected.

Then, shortly after the above shot, we made our way across the field, where I captured this next image.

This was also captured using the Nikon Z7ii with a Nikon Z14-30 lens at 16mm. I published more details, including the original RAW file and my processing steps, earlier today on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/p/DFxiutBI31G/?img_index=1).

If you like image processing, you might also like this week’s YouTube video, where I process a frosty morning scene.

I hope you like the images, and have a great weekend.