Great shot, love scene and colours. Only disturbing thing is this camera? pole intersecting with person, maybe shot couple of seconds later would have been better.

Great subject, seems to provide lot of photo possibilities with its lines.

I'm not much into christianity but I admire this magnificent work with these churches and frescoes, all the time and effort it took to create them...

Heather Season

Every year I know it's coming and every year I almost miss it. I'm talking about Heather Season, that brief time of the year when the moorland heather is at its most vibrant. Much like Bluebell Season, this is a too brief window of time and there's nearly always something that undermines my ability to get out and photograph it at its best.

The last few weeks have been too hot (for me at least) and mostly overcast up here in Mordor Lancashire, so I haven't been out on the moors very much at all. I did nip out one evening last week to take a closer look at the heather, but the conditions were extremely dull and overcast, even by the standards we're used to in this part of the world, but the heather itself was looking pretty good, just in need of a bit of decent light before it starts to fade, so I had my fingers crossed that this weekend would deliver. It sort of did.

The leaden skies showed no signs of parting on Saturday, but by the middle of Sunday afternoon things were looking up, with more broken clouds than I've seen in quite a while, so I decided to head up to the moors and see how it was looking.

I haven't used the GFX100S in what seems like ages, this comes down to two main reasons;

1. I've been photographing wildlife in my sporadic outings recently and it's really not the goto camera for that particular application.
2. It's bloody heavy and my fitness is still in the toilet.
3. I like to use it on a tripod to help eke out every bit of detail from that big sensor. This doesn't help with #2.

Anyway, I figured it was the camera of choice for this little expedition (also I just wanted to get it out and use it), so I packed it along with the chunky 20-35 and 45-100 f/4 lenses, plus my polariser and tripod, then set off to Black Coppice, often one of the best locations around here for heather.

This was the scene when I reached the verdant splendour of the Goit valley, overshadowed by the purple hued tones of Black Coppice on the left. What really struck me was the heat, although the car thermometer reckoned it was only 22C on the way to White Coppice, the humidity made it feel much, much hotter and I was sweating profusely just walking the relatively flat trail to reach this spot. I did consider not even bothering climbing to the top and maybe coming back later in the evening, but there was a high chance the light wouldn't be as good (it wasn't), so I decided to put in the work now and slowly scramble my way up there. I wish I'd brought a drink though.

This was the view looking up at part of the workings on the far side of the quarry. The potentially nice light had gone a bit overcast at this point.

About half way up the path that winds around the North end of the quarry I stopped for a rest to take this shot of Healey Nab, before continuing up what tends to be the more treacherous part of the path.

Eventually I reached the top where the heather is most dense. The light was still a bit off at this point, so I didn't spend too much time setting this shot up before moving on, intending to revisit it with a bit more thought on my way back when, hopefully, the light would be better.

Having carefully picked my way along the top of the first quarry (serious danger of death if you don't pay attention where you're putting your feet) I arrived at my planned location known only to me at least, as the 2nd quarry. It's a deeper V shaped cut into the hillside than the first one, which is a more rounded scoop sort of affair and has the added bonus that it didn't catch fire earlier this year, leaving a large part of its heather coverage blackened and burned.

When I came up here earlier in the week I found a composition a bit more pleasing than this, lacking the large scrubby section on the lower right, but it required getting a lot closer to the edge. On this occasion, I'd had a bit of a dizzy spell upon reaching the top and had to sit down, so for the rest of the walk, maintaining a safe distance from sheer cliff edges was something of a priority. Shame, as the weather was a bit better here, although, to be honest, it's still not great.

I gradually made my way around the upper edge of the quarry. Along the way I found what I think would have been a really nice composition taken from the apex of the cutting, but it was guarded by a horrendous swarm of flying things (not midges, something bigger and equally nasty) that were not at all happy I was intruding on their territory, so, after being driven off a few times I gave up and retreated to the other side of the quarry where I just had clouds of midges to deal with instead. This shot, taken in between wafting the midges away with a circular reflector, is looking towards the White Coppice cricket ground in the centre of the image. White Coppice itself is the gently rising green slope to the right of the cricket ground. I'm not sure why it's called White Coppice, there's nothing remotely white about it. Now, Black Coppice's name is quite appropriate as it spends most of the year beneath a thick coat of dark heather, apart from a handful of weeks when you could call it Crimson Coppice I suppose?

Anyway, if you look at the previous picture, you can see what looks like a path leading down into the quarry about a 1/3rd of the way in from the left hand edge of the image. When taking this picture, I was stood at the top of the rock face a little more left than that path, actually probably even more left I'd resorted to using a 10 second timer to allow me to draw the swarm of midges away from the camera while taking the shot. Anyway, having noticed it from the other side, I'd concluded this path didn't look particularly steep and would probably be the ideal route down into the quarry. To say it turned out to be an interesting scramble would be an understatement. If I'd been feeling 100% I probably wouldn't have minded, but feeling a bit under par as I was, the extra security of the tripod as a walking stick was very welcome.

This was the last shot I took, looking up from the foot of the quarry.

Just Looking up ...

Magnificent and so are the rest.

Superb. History in shapes and sizes.

What country, town?

Fine shot. I find the sunlit edge on the left a bit distracting, but the almost-shaded carved facade at the base adds a lot.

These get even better towards the end.
We don't have sheets of heather on the local crags - all limestone. But when we walked Whitbarrow Scar on Saturday with friends I was surprised to see quite a few clumps growing straight out of the clints (or grikes??) of the rock on the summit. I guess our wet climate washes most of the calcium out of what little soil there is in there.

The heather is beautiful. Used to be in everyone's garden in the days when rockery were in fashion but quite rare nowadays.
I like the last shot in particular because of the contrast between big, square, hard rock and soft, pink heather.

The little streak of watery sunlight on the left brings this to life.