I forgot to mention, this was from a helicopter.

The first is mesmeric, even though it's a still. I could sit there for hours.
And there's a real sense of danger in the last.

I like this one, where I can see more of the attractive building.

You handled the potentially difficult lighting really well here.

This is fun. Shame we don't get to see the end of his umbrella. (Be quite at the back).

The waves look cool. A lovely long sandy beach, I guess would be best to arrive with on a bike, since all the parking places are taken ;-)

Thanks. I agree that the light source in second is distraction and should be removed, once I get time to reprocess them.

Those waves look interesting, like clouds in sea. Not often one gets such bird eye view.

Great moment captured, made me smile.

What a nice places where not to be. I imagine if someone survived ship sinking and reached such shore the relief could turn into despair. Maybe in second location is some hope for rescue, as there seem to be trails down...

Something very satisfyingly solid about this tower.

Interesting looking church. Unusual ceiling structure. Neat work with those swords - cut cleanly through the robes as well as the bodies within!

Those heaps of stones are quite big, when you see the cars in the picture.

The rectangular seabed and little waves are strange.

A nice idea for a mini project. A super telephoto would be useful for this subject.

A Sunday Walk

On Saturday afternoon and late into the evening, there was a strong smell of burning lingering throughout Chorley. It had been a good candidate for hottest day of the year so far, nudging the needle to a heady 20C, rounding off a couple of dry, if not particularly warm weeks, which pointed to one very likely candidate for the source of the smell; moorland fire.

Sure enough, it turned out that part of Black Coppice now had a look to it that was significantly more in keeping with what its name might suggest. Fortunately, fire crews managed to contain the blaze before it could spread to the neighbouring, tinder dry moorland and by Sunday morning it had been successfully put out.

At lunchtime on Sunday, I decided to go and take a look for myself, but from a safe distance at the top of Healey Nab using my long telephoto lens. Here are a few of the images I shot along the way. These are all shot with the Nikon Z8 and the Nikkor 100-400 f/4.5-5.6S lens.

A Horse Amongst The Clouds

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Black Coppice Damage

This was the state of Black Coppice by the time caught sight of it. Not pretty, but, given how dry the moorland grass currently is, it could have been a lot worse. From the look of it, the fire was centred around the path that leads around the first quarry you come to when approaching from White Coppice (this is the path I climbed to reach the moors in my Round Loaf video on Youtube to put it into context for anyone who's seen that), which is an unusual spot for a fire to break out as it's not a particularly popular path or anywhere you'd stop for any length of time as it's steep and a bit treacherous. Fortunately, it looks like the damage was contained to the brush that lies immediately to either side of that path. The fence and stile at the top of the path appear to still be intact, looking at some other shots I took later in my walk.

Oh Deer

After reaching the summit of Healey Nab, I spent most of my time pootling around looking for wildlife to photograph. given that I had my best wildlife camera with me, but other than a pair of ducks swimming in the murky waters of Blue Water (definite trade descriptions violation in that place name for sure), I saw nothing. I did find more evidence of a recent fire up there, but given that's a regular hangout spot, I can easily imagine how that got started. It doesn't look as bad as the Black Coppice damage, but still a shame.

Anyway, as I was leaving Healey Nab, having wandered through the woods somewhat deflated that I hadn't encountered any notable wildlife, I turned a corner and there, right in front of me were a pair of Roe Deer, as close as I'd ever been to them. Quick as a flash, I lifted the camera to my eye, it was already set to my wildlife shooting settings bank (Custom wide area AF-C, auto subject detect, 1/1000sec, auto ISO, wide-ish aperture), so I was sure to get a good shot. I didn't.

The damned subject detect refused to see the deer. Even manually nudging the focus most of the way in the right direction didn't help and it just didn't want to know. The deer, for their part, quickly noticed me faffing about (possibly cursing) and trotted off to keep an eye on me from a safer distance. By that point the AF decided it did know what a deer was and promptly snapped into focus.

The subject detect on this camera is very iffy. When I was photographing the horses earlier, it sometimes latched on quickly and other times, just didn't want to know. I get a similar thing with birds, very hit and miss. It doesn't matter if they're large in the frame, moving or stationary, it just behaves like they're not there. I wouldn't mind if in those cases, it would just focus on whatever is in the box, but with subject detect enabled it doesn't seem to want to do that either, it's very odd.

Anyway, here's a couple of Roe Deer from far enough away to fill around 8 megapixels of a 45MP full frame sensor.

White Coppice Farm

A quick shot of White Coppice Farm that I took while making my way along Moor Road (which, unsurprisingly is a road that leads to the moors!). On the hill behind it, you can see the wide path that leads up to the ruins of Coppice Stile House, where White Coppice meets Heapey Moor, while further back you can see Great Hill, with the trees to the left of Great Hill marking the location of the Drinkwater's Farm ruin and the trees on the side of Great Hill itself marking the location of the Great Hill Farm ruins.

A thick and very visible power cable runs right across the lower third of this frame, which I've poorly cloned out using Capture One's retouching tools, which are starting to look a bit dated compared to the competition.

Nice shot, what a great looking bit of coastline, something that's severely lacking in this part of North West England to the best of my knowledge.

What a simple and fabulous shot. Outstanding.

The sheep give this a sense of scale. Looks great when enlarged.

The rectangle shapes are the shadows of the peaks in the swell as it approaches the shore - they move! I think caused by interference of two wave sets from different directions. As the water gets shallower, they break into the little waves near the 'corners'.

Nice simple image. Shame it doesn't have wings 😁

There were big fires in the Galloway hills last week. We've been down in Levens, so I'm wondering what will be visible from 'our side' of the hill when we head back this week. 😕

Thanks, this was taken in Portugal along the Algarve coast line :-)