Good morning to everyone wherever you are in the world...
Wormsmeat is away on a long weekend to Marrakesh, so I'm stepping in to start off this week's thread. Turning on the radio this morning I had a heartstopping moment - I'm sure we all hope he's safe and will soon be back with us all.

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Seasons turning

I just finished reading news and now your post... I hope that Wormsmeat is OK and will be back with those street photos he is famous of...

Dusk time in one of old town lookouts:

I hoped to get photo of super moon over the high buildings but unfortunately it was cloudy and 15 minutes after moon rise moon was lost in clouds. So all I got were shots of moon over residental buildings from soviet era (mostly) which are not considered as something worth shooting:

Random Roundup

It's been a bit too hot to get out on the moors or anywhere particularly exciting this week, so instead I've been out on a number of short walks, including a very short one first thing this morning to catch the mist, which turned out more murky than misty.

All images taken with the Fujifilm GFX100S + 35-70. Processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23. The woodland and sunny evening shots also employed a CPL. The woodland and morning shots were taken on a tripod, the rest are handheld.

Brinscall Woods

This was the first set of images I shot with the GFX. I did take the Nikon Z7 along for comparison (and shared a pair of images from both for comparison last week), but these are just the GFX shots that I liked. Quite a lot of what I shot were ruined with blown highlights as the GFX100S' histogram has practically zero overexposure headroom, unlike the Z7 which is generally just about right when the top end starts to bunch up a little. It does counter this with incredibly deep shadow recovery and vanishingly low noise, so swings and roundabouts I guess. I am shooting with blinkies on now, which gives me a bit more information to decide if I'm bothered about the blown areas than just using the histogram on its own.

Pikestones

This next set were taken on a Wednesday evening wander in the area surrounding Pikestones. This is a neolithic long barrow burial chamber on Anglezarke moor. It's been badly damaged over the years, which does make it looks like little more than a pile of rocks, but parts of the structure of the burial chamber are still standing, as pictured here.

From Pikestones, I took a brief wander out onto the moors towards the summit of Hurst Hill. As it was a very hot evening I only got as far as The Manky Pool of Anglezarke Moor before deciding it would be wiser to turn back before I fried beneath the oppressive sun.

On the way back, I spotted this view of Rivington Pike. It would have been nice to get in a bit tighter here, but at the moment, I only have the 35-70 for the GFX, so other than heavy cropping that wasn't an option. Having said that, I'm quite enjoying the 65:24 in camera crop. It's roughly a half height frame, but that still leaves me 50MP to work with. The raw files are saved as full 4:3 images, unlike the Nikon, which only saves the cropped area for some unknown reason, so I can reframe it later if I want to. C1P also ignores the cropping metadata, so I do need to remember that I've taken a cropped shot rather than just shoddily composed it, then reapply the crop during edit.

I quite liked this backlit tree that I spotted on the way back to the car.

Murky Morning

On my way out for the Wednesday evening walk, I spotted this scene from the top of Nickleton Brow.

With the promise of a little mist this morning, I decided to head back to Nickleton Brow to try the same shot under different conditions. Unfortunately, misty turned out the be more murky than anything, so the results aren't really what I'd hoped for. Under this lighting the ploughed field in the foreground feels a bit more intrusive. I took this just inside the open gate on the field, so I am wondering if I'd get a better shot wandering a little way into the field, hopefully not upsetting the farmer in the process.

Turning to face Rivington Pike from the same spot yielded this view. Again, I think this would be nice were it not for the foreground. Maybe I need a 100ft tripod to get above it, plus some substantial ladders to reach the camera?

This was taken at the top of Nickleton brow. The field where the other two shots were taken is just off camera to the right. I think there's a good shot here, in the right light, so I will be having another crack at it if the right conditions coincide with me being up and about.

I'm always fascinated by backlit grass when I see it, but it's really hard to do it justice. Out of the two, I prefer the 2nd shot here. It has a characterful group of trees, but I do find the patch of grass bottom left to be a bit distracting, it's still a nice shot though. Maybe a 5:4 crop would help here?

OMG, the pictures coming out from Marrakesh and the surrounding towns today look terrible. What a disaster!
Hoping the locals find a way to cope with the situation as best as possible and that Wormsmeat gets back OK.

Here's a shot taken almost this day 3 years ago today in Mühlbach, Austria. Processed today.
You can't see what's going on down there below, just thankful to be up above the fog.

I think the veil of clouds adds a lot - straight pictures of the moon can be very repetitive, supermoon or not.

End of summer?!

You really are a master of the woodland shots. These are fantastic as usual.
I don't know what I'd do without blinkies. So useful.

Backlighting always grabs my attention 😀
I tried a squarer crop but didn't like it. I think the only solution would have been better framing in the first instance - a step or two to the side (I think there might have been an inconvenient tree in the way)

Essence of alps in September 😀 I'm heading off to SW French alps in a month, so hoping for some half decent weather!

It must be hell in the narrow streets and alleyways of old Marrakesh.
Having experienced a 'mild' earthquake in Crete some years ago, it's something I always wonder about when visiting earthquake prone destinations. Will this hotel stay upright? Where is the safest spot... Where is my torch. Must be terrifying.

I hope not! We haven't had much summer here yet!
You've caught that late summer vibe nicely.

Really like that second one. Lovely light and colours and with the dark tree trunks just behind

Saturday Sunset

It looked to be quite a spectacular sunset tonight. Or so I thought as I watched the sky getting more and more interesting through my living room window. Eventually, something clicked and I decided I needed to get out there and shoot it before it was too late. Really, it was already too late and certainly, with just 10 minutes until sunset, way too late to get to anywhere particularly good.

The only place within reasonable driving time from my house was a location along Blackburn Brow, which overlooks canal mill (AKA Botany Bay Antiques in its pre-pandemic life) and the Mormon Temple. Building works at the mill make it look like, well, a building site, so I plumped for the temple and in no time was lugging the Z7, 100-400 and a tripod up and down Blackburn Brow looking for a good vantage point.

Eventually I settled on one where the sun was setting right behind the temple, but I'd dithered around too long and it had actually set. Even so, I aimed my camera and shot a few rounds, ending up with just two compositions that I liked...

The first one fills the sky better, but I prefer the looser framing of the second. Really, I could have done with that cloud band extending just a teensy bit higher.

A circus has currently set up in the field facing the temple on the opposite side of the M61 motorway, so I scurried a bit further along Blackburn Brow to a point where I could frame both that and the temple and took another shot.

The light in the sky was really starting to fade by this point, but I think I prefer this shot to the other two.

It's a pity I left it too late to get to a more expansive location, there was some really interesting multi layered stuff happening on the other side of the sky that I didn't even have time to take a shot of. I suppose the lesson to learn here is, don't dither, just get out and shoot.

And don't omit to take a camera with you when you go out on a habitual evening stroll! The sky here was very interesting(slowly developing bruise colours!) but as usual i didn't even have my phone. I agree the second shot is the better one.

I hope is fine, earthquakes are really scary. I have a few first hand experiences (no more than 5.0 magnitude) and I felt completely helpless.

This is so peaceful, liked it. It looks like a BW.

What a moon!