Written by Late again Steve! Despite my best efforts and planning I can sometimes find myself off-location when nature puts on an outstanding performance. And this was the case here, but this time it wasn’t really my faulty, well, maybe it was a little bit my fault.
I had set out with enough time to get where I wanted to be for daybreak (just). Although it was a bitterly cold morning and I expected some ice, I got more than I bargained for. I had to drive along a hilly one-car-wide road that was covered in patches of thick ice. It was literally skating rink conditions and I was forced to drive extremely carefully and very, very slowly.
Dawn colours turned on when I expected them to; I just wasn’t in the right place. Rather than miss out altogether I parked up as soon as I safely could, then slipped and slithered to this frozen patch of flooded moor, hoping that the ice would pick up overhead colours. I managed to capture the effect I was after, but only by venturing out onto ice that shattered when I put my full weight on it and ultimately left me standing shin deep in ice-cold water. It was the only way that I could get my camera low enough to give precedence to the foreground texture. This picture certainly isn’t a jaw-dropper and I won’t be practising any award reception speeches on the strength of it, but it’s definitely better than nothing at all.
Perhaps I should have anticipated the road conditions and set off earlier (it’s always better to be on location twenty minutes too early than twenty seconds too late). Perhaps I was too complacent about winter sunrise times and I should have made better use of the landscape photographers’ best friend – an alarm clock. On reflection; I think that it was entirely my own fault that I was late (again).
This occasional blog is a tasty serving of nature and wildlife photography, with a side dish of my experiences out in the field and lightly seasoned with any random thoughts that occur to me along the way.
