Curbar Edge (January 2014)

As the lockdown starts to erode the new photography, I am returning to previous year’s photography, reprocessing old images with a fresh eye and including them into the photoblog until the restrictions ease.  

I have chosen 2014 which started with several trips to the Peak District and a then a visit to castles in Northumberland. In between, I spent time in Birmingham city centre photographing the library and the Selfridges building and published the results last month. 

In this post, I concentrate on the first two sessions on Curbar Edge in the Peak District. I can’t fully recall but it appears that I set myself a New Year goal of searching for compositions on both Curbar Edge and Baslow Edge, capturing them in various lighting conditions. I began with the afternoon golden hours and then included some morning sessions. Persistence did pay off as I experienced some dramatic light which including a rainbow and a cloud inversion.  

Throughout these sessions the style of photography remained fairly constant: tripod mounted camera, wide angle 17mm-40mm lens, bracketed exposures, often shooting into the light. The processing was a challenge at the time, trying to combine the exposures and removing bits of lens flare etc and proved an equally absorbing reprocessing project for lockdown. 

This time I worked only from one image rather than three bracketed exposures. Bracketing is a technique that aims to capture details in the highlights and the shadows which can be combined to produce a balanced exposure and is often referred to as high dynamic range photography (HDR). Software can assist with the blending of the images but results can look unnatural. 

To avoid this I accepted in the reprocessing that highlights would be bright and the shadows dark. I think this is in keeping with the ‘dark peak’ area of the Peak District, so called because of its desolate moorland and often dull gritstone.

In contrast to 2014, my photographic approach today aims to keep the photography as natural as possible, using the light to my advantage rather than fighting against it. An ultra wide angle shot would be rare and I am currently more likely to zoom into the detail to represent the conditions instead of including everything in the frame. That said, I very much enjoyed this look back and was pleased with the results, particularly the first image below which, if anything, defines and justifies the style of photography I was trying to achieve in 2014.