The one benefit of not sleeping is it’s really easy to get up and get out of the house before sunrise. So, this morning (Saturday) I found myself at Hatfield Moors at 7am, a full forty five minutes before sun rise. Thankfully I have a very good head torch that turns night into day, and the early morning sky was starting to turn into a plan blue.
I had the fright of my life walking through the woodland as a fairly large deer burst from the bushes to my left and cleared the pathway in a single bound before disappearing into the woodland. That will wake anyone up quicker than the strongest espresso. Once I’d got my breath back and realised I wasn’t about to be eaten by a panther (this is the kind of stuff that goes through my head walking through the woods in the dark – don’t read crap online) I made my way to my first point I wanted to photograph.
I’ve been trying to get a decent photo of this location for ages now, and this is my favourite so far, although I still think there’s a better photo there with the right sky or perhaps a bit of mist. I’ll keep trying. I stood at this point for about 15 minutes waiting for the light. During that time there were thousands (!) of geese flying in hundreds of flocks of V formations. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it was worth going early just to see it. Unfortunately, it was too dark to get a photo.
My next plan was to get onto the moors. I wanted to get the marsh land with the sunrise. I had the photo in mind, but again – the light and cloud had different ideas to me. I did get this nice photo of some fungus.
I also go this shot, but it’s very noisy after being edited. If I get back there next weekend I’ll bracket the same photo and see if that works better. I might run this through Luminar and see if that does a better job than Lightroom.
So, only one photo I really like – out of 60-odd taken. There were a lot more that made it to editing, but felt grey sky and flat landscape make a challenging location for photography. I also ran out of time as my wife was picking me up. But, that’s ok. I enjoyed my time out of the house and that’s the point really.
Shaun Madill Photography 