Sunset On The Nab
I made it out of the house on a couple of evenings walks this week, catching a nice sunset one evening, followed by a naff one on the other.
For the nice sunset, I'd brought the GFX100S plus the 32-64 f/4 and 45-100 f/4. My plan was to do a lap of The Nab, starting on the East side, before heading up into and through the woods, then down to the West side to catch the last of the sunset.
As I set out on the first part of the walk, the initially promising sky clouded over, ruining any of the landscape shots I had in mind, so instead I headed off into the woods to see what I could find in there instead.
I must have dawdled somewhat as I made my way through the woods, because when I finally emerged on the other side, sunset was in full swing, with the sky lighting up in lovely tones. Unfortunately, I wasn't in the best spot with any decent views to get the most out of it, so I improvised with what I had at hand to try and end up with something.
By the time I'd made my way lower down the slope, the sun had set and all that remained was a cold blue glow.
The second evening had a similar forecast, but just turned out to be overcast, with no colour to speak of. But ever hopeful, I just went straight to the locations that would have worked best on the previous evening and loitered around to see if anything happened. It didn't, so I packed up and went home, grabbing a handful of shots on the way out and back.
On this occasion, I'd brought the Z8 with the 24-70 f/2.8 and 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 as I'd been frustrated with the lack of reach on the previous evening.
All images processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23. I've replaced my monitor mid way through the editing process, so there may be some stylistic discrepancies in this set as I get used to the look of the new one (even though it's calibrated exactly the same, they never seem to render images identically).
The outgoing monitor was a Benq PD3220U that I've had for a few years now, which, although it's an LCD panel, suffers from terrible image retention, needing a good 30 minutes powered up in a well lit room for the apparent burn in to fade, seemingly, shining a bright light at the panel helps to normalise it quicker, so there's a degree of photosensitivity going on there for some reason, something I've never seen before in an LCD, it's a really weird issue that I've managed to find no information on at all regarding this panel.
When calibrated it also seemed to suffer from crushed blacks, something else I never really got to the bottom of with it, but I think this led to my tendency to steer away from really deep black in my images because the shadow tones would just appear to fall off a cliff. Oddly enough, using the builtin in Benq profiles, it didn't suffer from this, it was just when calibrated with the SpyderX. The new panel, a Dell U4025QW doesn't appear to exhibit this issue, despite being calibrated with the same puck.
Tree Tunnel
I've been meaning to shoot this scene for some time. It often leaps out at me as I drive up to park in the layby along here. One problem is the layby is actually in shot from here and, once I've parked, so is my car. On this occasion, I'd managed to tuck the car as far into the hedge as I safely could and then positioned the camera so that the trees on the right were mostly hiding it. There was a little bit of it remaining visible, but a quick dab with C1P's healing tool clumsily got rid of it well enough, I think, see if you can spot the join.
In The Woods
With my recent health issues, walking through woods puts a weird strain on my brain, something to do with the detailed environment and shifting perspective I think (personal diagnosis relying heavily on zero years in medical school, but I do know how computers work if that helps), but I'm still managing to take short walks through these lovely environments and just ignoring the nauseating sensations as best I can. This particular scene greets you shortly after you enter from the East and is home to a short, but terribly steep muddy slope that I'm always terrified of slipping on while carrying my camera gear. Sometimes lugging a tripod around can come in handy as a walking pole in these scenarios.
The Dancer
We're back to the anthropomorphic trees now, with this characterful chap that appears to be having a grand old time bopping to the sounds of the woods. Nice to see the autumnal colours creeping in too.
The Side of the Path
I noticed this scene at the side of the path as I made my way back to the car after the disappointing sunset last night. It demanded to be taken.
Emerging From The Woods
So, this was the scene that greeted me as I emerged from the woods. Mostly clear sky, but there were bands of clouds dotted around to pick up colour from the setting sun, plus rarest of all, a clear view all the way out to sea with no perma-fog to prematurely kill the sunset.
Chorley Town Centre
As I scrambled around to find any composition that I could use capitalise on these nice colours, I spotted that, carefully positioned, I could see several of the major landmarks in Chorley town centre through a gap in the tree tops. This shot shows the tower of the town hall beside the brutalist concrete structure of the police station, a design hated by many locals, but I've always liked it ever since I was a kid as back then it looked futuristic. I still think it looks retro-futuristic now and certainly way better than the hulking beige box of the entertainment and shopping complex the council threw up just before the pandemic, finally destroying the historic location of this market town's "flat iron" market. It's a rough looking thing indeed, with all of the design flair of a 1990's PC. I'm still bitter that they knocked down the Odeon. Anyway...
Trees at Sunset
The trees I was trying to shoot around were quite nice in themselves, so here's a wider shot including a couple of them and the sun for extra bonus points too.
Further Down The Hill
Having repositioned a bit further down the hill (you can see the big rig out to sea looks closer to the sun from here), this was the view.
The Big Rig
I really could have done with a longer lens for this one. As it is, this is a hefty crop (15 megapixels from 102) taken at 100mm (80mm equiv) of the Valaris Norway, a massive jack up rig, currently lurking off the Ainsdale coast. Annoyingly, when I went back with the Nikon and the 100-400 a few nights later, you could barely see it due to the sea fog. Apparently it's going to be there for three years, so hopefully I'll get another crack at shooting it in good conditions with a longer lens.
Après Sunset
At this point the sun had finally dropped below the horizon, leaving a pleasant glow, but not much light elsewhere. Another hefty crop (27 megapixels from 102).
Afterglow 1
After the sun had disappeared, I turned my attention (and my camera) briefly towards the Mormon Temple. The row of houses in front of the temple is actually the start of the road that leads up to the moors, including White Coppice and Healey Nab, where I was stood taking this. You can also get to Jepsons Gate, Anglezarke and Winter Hill if you follow it far enough.
Afterglow 2
A tighter composition from slightly further down the path. Behind the temple you can just see Blackpool Tower on the horizon.
