Sunrise On The Moors
While I love the mood, light and atmosphere of images taken at sunrise, I have taken very few myself, this is because it requires getting up at ungodly times for most of the year in order to reach the chosen location before the sun comes up. In addition to this, I live on the western edge of the Pennine range here in England, sometimes referred to as "the backbone of England". This makes a very effective shield against seeing an early sunrise as the hills are mostly in the way. The sun has to rise considerably before you can even see it here.
Of course, if you get high enough in the hills, you can mitigate this and one of the easiest spots to reach is Withnell moor. There's literally a road leading up, more or less, onto the top of it. The problem with Withnell moor, is there's not a lot up there, as moors go, it's pretty barren. There is however, one significant landmark. The lone Beech tree that marks the former site of Botany Bay farm, one of the many moorland farms demolished by Liverpool Corporation to prevent pollution in their water reclamation project.
Little remains of the once busy and bustling farm, other than a low pile of rubble and the solitary Beech tree, stubbornly persisting against whatever punishment the elements can throw at it.
I've photographed this tree at dawn before, most successfully with the Fujifilm X-H2 and 100-400mm lens, a combination I could rarely get to reliably focus, however on that occasion it yielded a sharp image. Over the intervening years I haven't managed to improve on that shot despite several attempts at the beginning of last year, so with the promise of not entirely horrible conditions on the weather forecast yesterday, I decided to drag myself out of bed and head up onto the moors to see what I could see.
Fortunately, at this time of year, sunrise is around 8:30 in the morning, so I didn't have to get out of bed too early. But as I trudged through the semi frozen bogs and along the icy moorland paths (broadly the same things) in the near dark, watching the dull purple bruise slowly spread above the eastern horizon, I was cursing myself for spending an extra half hour in bed and wondering if I was going to make it to the farm on time.
As things turned out, I arrived at the farm just a couple of minutes before the faint glow on the horizon expanded into something much more impressive. However, it only lasted for a handful of minutes, allowing time for a couple of hasty setups and position changes, before the colours waned and the sky returned to its traditional blue-grey tones.
Equipment lugged around on this trip, included the Fujifilm GFX100S + 45-100 + 100-200, along with a sturdy tripod. I didn't have time to swap lenses, so all the images are taken with the 45-100 that was on the camera when I set out. Despite bracketing, all images presented here are from single exposures, processed from raw files in Capture One Pro 23.
Sunrise At Botany Bay
I took a few different shots, moving short distances across the moor. Initially I had the tree on the left of the sunrise fully below the line of the hills you can just see on that side of the image, but for this shot, which I think is the most successful, I repositioned myself part way through the action to place the tree on the right of the glow so it appears to be leaning towards it.
Close Up Of The Tree
This was taken after the sun had risen. There's still a hint of colour in the sky, but it's nothing crazy. I'd decided to walk over to the tree for a closer look and quite liked how the empty branches spread above me when I stood at the foot of it.
Portrait of The Tree
A full length portrait of the tree in its winter attire.
Stormy Clouds over Darwen Jubilee Tower
Dark clouds were rolling in while I pottered around the remains of the farm. This was the view looking towards Darwen moor, with the stormy clouds catching a little bit of blush from the rising sun.
Botany Bay Farm Ruins
All that remains of the farm itself, with a sprinkling of frost looking like someone's been out with the icing sugar. Another one of those hideous, huge information signs has been placed immediately next ruins, but I positioned myself so that it would be easy to remove with the healing brush in C1P.
The Path Across Withnell Moor
This path leads back across the moor to two other ruins, firstly New Ground and then Solomon's Temple, although by the time I reached those it was raining quite heavily, so I didn't hang around to photograph them.
Botany Bay Farm on Withnell Moor
Looking back towards Botany Bay farm, you can see just how empty this patch of moor is, with the tree being the only notable landmark for a square mile.
Darwen Tower Through The Rain
The drizzle that had begun while I was still at Botany Bay was getting quite heavy now, but I quite liked the light on the clouds above Darwen moor, so I took this shot from Solomon's Temple before hurriedly hiking the final leg back to the car to dry off.
