Surprising Silhouettes!

I love Surprise View in the Peak District.  It is not that far from my house (just over 30 minutes drive).  There is a car park there.  It only takes about 20 minutes to walk from the car park to the top of Surprise View.  And once you get there the view is simply beautiful (and it feels like you are right in the middle of the Peak District but without all that tiring walking).  It is especially beautiful if there if there is snow on the ground like there was today (although that made it particularly chilly!).

I have been a frequent visitor to Surprise View and have taken lots of photos there over the years but I’d never really managed to nail a decent sunset there before.  So I decided to head over there today to try and do just that.

I also needed to take a photo for week 4 of my one photo a week in 2012 challenge too so I thought a Surprising sunset would do the job.

I set up my tripod behind the big rock formations at the top of the hill so that they would be silhouetted against the setting sun. A group of families then started climbing up the rocks and I liked how they were also silhouetted against the sky if I exposed for the sky and not the rocks.

One of the Dads spotted me and came over.  I was a little worried that he would be angry at me for taking photos of his kids but he was nothing of the sort.  In fact he was interested in what I was doing and when I showed him that everyone was coming out as a silhouette it got him and the other parents thinking.  They all very kindly climbed back up onto the rocks again and decided to pose for me.



That first pose was marvellous.  But then they decided to get even more creative.  And bingo, I got my week 4 shot!



The families then left leaving me with a lone man standing on the rocks.




Once the sun had completely set the whole sky went a wonderful yellowy-orange colour but by then I had set off back down the hill towards my car.  I would have loved to have stayed and captured the rocks with this colour in the sky but I didn’t want to have to negotiate the rocky climb back down in the dark!

I have realised that I forgot to blog about my week 3 photo last week.  So here it is.  It is a 3 photo panorama stitch of the University of Sheffield Students’ Union building.  I had walked past it the day before at sunset and the sky behind the Union building was full of glorious orange colours.  I didn’t have my camera with me so I vowed to return the next day.  And typically the sunset the day after was rubbish.  But it was raining a bit which allowed me to capture some great reflections in the ground so all was not lost.



Stay tuned to my blog for my week 5 photo next week!