Solitary Sunset
It seems like it hasn't stopped raining this week, this is mostly because it hasn't, at least for the last three days, so I suspect the surface of the moors will have about as much substance to them as a really thick bowl of soup right now, which is a pity, because things had dried out quite nicely by last weekend when I took an evening wander up Black Brook.
The midges were out in force, the news of a free Steve Buffet must have spread like wildfire as no sooner had I stepped out of the car I was hijacked by hundreds of the buggers and they stubbornly continued to follow me for most of the walk, only to suddenly vanish once the sun had set, but by that time I was already full of bites, despite lathering myself up with copious amounts of Smidge (bug repellent supposedly formulated to dissuade the bitey critters we get in these parts). I think the next time I'm out in the evening the mosquito net / hood thing will be coming out.
Since getting the GFX100S, I've been using a tripod more and more, but I've never felt the Benro Mach 3 I've been using along with the 3LT ball head I pinched off my Brian tripod has really been up to the job, I've also been suffering quite a lot from lower back pain of late and I suspect one of the reasons is bending down to use the viewfinder of whatever camera I've had mounted on the tripod as it doesn't quite reach my head height (6ft) without extending the third leg section, which are a bit spindly and I typically ignore. With this in mind, I've recently replaced this setup with an iFootage TC7 and a Leofoto VH-30R pan and tilt head. The TC7 has a levelling bowl, which makes it a great match for a pan and tilt head and so far at least, the whole setup feels more stable and precise when aiming the camera than what I was using before. The TC7 also places the camera more at less at my head height with just two extending sections, so hopefully it'll help with the back issues as I wont be crouching as much to take my shots.
I'd like to do more moorland stuff with the GFX, but I feel to get any quantifiable benefit from it over the Nikon (Z7 or Z8 they're more or less on par in terms of IQ when handheld) it really needs to be used on a tripod, which puts me off carrying it onto the higher moors, so I was keen to see how manageable this particular combination (GFX body + 32-64 + 45-100 + TC7 + VH-30R) was on a moorland walk. In the end it wasn't too bad on this relatively short walk and the tripod makes a handy makeshift walking stick when descending down the steep and slippery slopes of places such as Black Coppice.
Anyway, here are a handful of images from the walk, mostly presented in full res 102MP format. They're all taken from single raw files, processed in Capture One Pro 23. The last two were very challenging to get to a state where I was happy with them, the last one in particular went through several revisions and even provoked a recalibration of my monitor. In both cases, the main issue was raising the exposure in the foreground without introducing an unpleasantly muddy looking band on the horizon. There was also quite an uncomfortable colour shift between the sky and the foreground as most of the light falling on the foreground was just ambient light from the blue sky overhead, rather than the more orange tinged colour of the visible sky, so in both cases there's quite a lot of careful manipulation to balance all this out into something that I was happy with.
1. The Goit
At the beginning of the walk I have to cross The Goit. This always looks nice in the evening at this time of year with the light streaming in from the West. I've taken variations of this shot a number of times and it's really difficult to keep the highlights and shadows from clipping, even the GFX100S seems to be finding this challenging here.
2. Misty Chorley
Having followed Black Brook up to the point where it enters the White/Black Coppice ravine from Heapey Moor, I crossed onto Black Coppice and was treated to this view when I looked back downstream. It has a very peaceful mood to my eyes, as indeed it had on the night, if it hadn't been for those blasted midges moving in for the kill.
3. The Black Coppice Boundary Wall
Both Black and White Coppice are each surrounded by a boundary wall. Both are in a terrible state of disrepair, having been allowed to crumble over the years. Here I've climbed a little way up the side of the hill on the outside of the Black Coppice boundary wall. I particularly liked the way the backlit grass looked here.
4. White Coppice
This shot was taken from the path that runs along the top of the Black Coppice side of the Black Brook ravine, looking across White Coppice in the general direction of Blackpool (if you zoom in, you can see Blackpool Tower lurking in the mist on the horizon). This shot also highlights the midge problem as the image is full of bright specks, each being a backlit set of flying teeth with a lust for blood.
5. White Coppice Quarry
This was taken a little further down the path (and closer to the edge) than the previous shot as the sun did the decent thing and hid behind a cloud. I was hopeful that there would be more nice colours once it reappeared, but there's actually an large body of fog over the Irish Sea as is usual and the sun basically reappeared briefly below this cloud, only to be consumed by the fog.
