An Evening On The Moors
The planet is now getting back into a position in space where there's enough time for me to get up onto the moors after work for a couple of hours before it goes dark, which is very considerate of it. Even the weather has played ball over the past few days, so one night this week I was quite eager to gather my kit together and begin the lengthy trudge up the steep tarmac of Well Lane to reach Withnell moor.
As I puffed and panted my way up the tree lined, single carriageway road, I spotted a path just inside the adjacent woods to my right, so I haphazardly struggled hopped over the low fence separating the lane from the woods and finished the remainder of the ascent in the leafy glades of the woods, hoping the soft soil beneath my feet would help to stave off the gradually building shin splints emerging from my shins. Spoiler alert, it didn't, but it was a much nicer environment than the lane itself, so I didn't mind.
After exploring the woods for a bit, I eventually emerged back onto the lane and headed across the fields to Ratten Clough, before making my way across Withnell moor.
Kit for this outing was the Nikon Z8 + 24-70 f/2.8S. I'd also brought the Nikkor 100-400 f/4.5-5.6S along for the ride and this got some good use towards the end of the walk. Processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23.
Bent Over Backwards
This poor tree has presumably fallen victim to the various storms we've had lately.
Following The Trail
This path runs alongside Well Lane, but stays just inside the woods, until it reaches the Hatch Brook waterfall, at which point it suddenly vanishes, presumably lost to some historic deadfall, not to mention the sheer drop at the waterfall, but from the point the path disappears you can't see that.
More Casualties
I'm not sure how long this one's been down, but as it's alongside the lane, it's likely been taken out by the gales that swept through over the past few months.
Onto The Moors
This is actually the point where Hatch Brook leaves the moors and disappears beneath Well Lane to reappear in the woods before tumbling down its steep and rocky waterfall.
Whittles Plantation
Often, a cluster of mature trees on these moors is an indication of the former location of a moorland farm and these are no exception, although the farm ruins themselves are out of shot and way off to the left.
Ratten Clough
At the top of Well Lane stands the ruins of Ratten Clough. The most complete of the moorland ruins, possibly because it was the most recent to be abandoned (in the 1950s I think). The fence surrounding it has recently been renewed and it's also been blessed with one of those massive information lectern things, which has been cloned out here as, like all of the others that popped up over the past year or two, it really detracts from the look of the place. Anyway, signage rant aside, by the time I reached this spot, the sun was quite low on the largely clear horizon, so the adjacent tree was casting some fine shadows on the walls of the ruin.
Shades of Ratten Clough
I was really drawn to the bold shadows cast on the ruin and spent a little time trying various locations and compositions. I was short for time as I had plans to be on another part of the moors and I was restricted by being on the wrong side of the fence, so this is the best I came up with, actually leaning against one of the fence posts to fit as much of the wall and tree in as I could without foreground obstructions.
Leaving Ratten Clough
At this point I left Ratten Clough and struck out across the open moor. The previous picture was taken beside the gate on the right hand edge of this one. At the location I'm stood here, there's a thoroughly un-maintained and quite complicated multi-way stile, that you really take your life in your hands climbing over.
Cocker's Folly From Withnell Moor
These trees stand tall along the edge of the moor and mark the location of Cocker's Folly, another lost farm on these moors. Looking beyond them to the horizon, you can see the massive rig that's been parked in the Wirrall estuary for some time now. Nice to get some use from the 100-400, it doesn't get enough love from me because it is rather heavy.
Owl Be Seeing You
This is the reason I brought the 100-400 along. I've seen this owl hunting on the moors before and a couple of years ago discovered the general location of its nest, so I've been meaning to deliberately get up there properly equipped to photograph it. The last time I tried was with the X-H2 and a suitably long lens, but that suffered from really haphazard AF, struggling in low light. Surely the Z8+100-400 would be way better? Well, sort of.
I seriously undermined myself, but reaching my intended location close the nesting area too late. I actually spotted the owl setting off on its nightly rounds when I was still on the far side of the moor. So I missed an excellent opportunity to be in a much better location. After that, it was a case of taking shots whenever it popped its head above the horizon, which was infrequently and too far away for the 100-400 to really deliver its best results.
Also, by this time the light was really beginning to fade. I had the camera set to manual shutter speed at 1/400s and the lens wide open, with auto ISO taking up the slack. This led to some severely high ISO's (25600 anyone?), but that would have been okay if I'd been closer.
The worst thing was the subject detect AI, it was really indecisive about locking on to the bird, often just throwing the lens completely out of focus. In fairness, the owl is well camouflaged for its environment, quite far away and it was getting dark, so just locking on at all was a bit of a bonus, but I've had similar issue trying to photograph Kestrels that were just sat there, right in front of me, filling a large portion of the frame and the camera would just completely ignore them, so I've yet to get to the bottom of that. In the end I gave up trying to use subject detect and switched to wide area C-AF, which seemed a much more reliable approach.
Definitely still more experimentation to do on the bird AF front.
Death From The Skies
It looks like some mouse is about to have a really bad day here, but in the end it didn't swoop down as it looked like it was about to do.
I did try running these through Topaz to cut the noise, but I think it's just made it a bit smudgy, even with the strength turned right down, so I think I prefer the version straight out of C1P.
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