According the weatherman there was going to be plenty of sunshine almost all day in this part of the Peak District. It even looked like there might be a chance of some decent light first thing in the morning. We weren’t the only ones labouring under this misapprehension – we passed a number of people stood next to their tripods, cameras pointing down into the valley at Curbar and Calver and in the direction of where the sun might cast its first rays if it were to make an appearance.
It didn’t spoil my fun though – the intended destination was the scattering of trees that appear before Curbar turns into Froggat Edge. I’d photographed these trees before but the conditions this time were nowhere near as favourable as my previous visit, so instead of taking any colour shots I opted for a couple of medium format black and white shots and a few with the IR converted Canon 350D.
The 350D really is the most shocking piece of trash by modern standards – I bought it secondhand and it’s well worn, some dust is trapped under the IR filter and needs cloning out of every shot and it only really produces acceptable images when used with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 (which itself is hardly the standard bearer of the Canon lens range). Despite all this though it’s occasionally an absolute gem for monochromatic images like this one – on cloudy days the mild IR filter cuts the contrast between the sky and the ground and provides a slightly different look from a normal desaturated/greyscale image and with the 50mm lens it produces pixel perfect images.
Prints, posters, cards available from photo4me or ArtFlakes.
