Following the recent enjoyable sunrise trip to Westleton Heath to capture the colours of heather, club members decided to return to Roydon Common having visited last month at sunset.
You can check out all my Roydon Common blogs here.
We had seen some recent shots online which suggested the heather was in better form so decided to have another visit. With a sunrise choice, this meant another 4am get up (ouch)! Well it was 04:10 to be precise but these are brutal!
I arrived around 05:20 to find the guys were parked and already up on the common, so got my boots on and paced over.
It wasn’t dark but there wasn’t enough light as yet to grab anything decent.
The usual walk along the path to the back/top and to the left across to the other corner of the common was made.
There I met the guys setting up and we chatted about potential scenes that were appealing. We had mist in the distance so felt if the sunrise light would be good, we had real potential to grab some really good captures.
Not long after setting up, the light started to lift although we could see the sun would probably be masked by the morning cloud and mist.
At our starting position, I grabbed the shot below as I really love the green of the fern in the foreground.
Most of the chaps were to the right of my position above shooting down the path to the tree at the bottom of the hill.
It was time to move on so I wandered around and did various shots of trees.
The tree on the left intrigued me because of its shape, but also it’s striking shade of green against the sandy earth and purple heather.
It looks great in this next shot from a distance.
The tree on the right was worth a click as it stood above the heather so I was able to see it against the sky, in contrast to the previous tree.
The middle tree was the one I mentioned earlier that was the target for the guys shooting down the path as a leading line. I didn’t fancy getting that shot as I really wanted different scenes. But I did shoot it closer trying to get a decent amount of heather in the foreground and grab the misty background.
I wandered around scouting for more compositions but the sunrise had long since arrived and it was fairly bright. I recognise the feeling on these shoots where (probably enhanced by tiredness) that you’ve done shooting and are reaching the end of your motivational energy. I always have Ronald’s sausage and egg McMuffin and hash brown on my mind too, which doesn’t help!
However, as I walked down to the lower area of the common, I grabbed a shot of the scene below which I think is my best one of the shoot.
To avoid using a graduated filter (tricky with the tree in the sky), I made a conscious choice to underexpose the image with confidence that I could pull up the shadows in the foreground.
I caught up with the rest of the guys and we were agreed that it was a wrap, the sunlight was harsh now and we made our way back to the car park.
There was just time to greedily grab one more.
Coffees and a debrief at the car park summarised the morning as being a really enjoyable meet up and some good scenes but also challenging.
Cloud cover and a below average sunrise colour meant ‘epic’ was not going to happen but as always simple pleasures bring a lot of fun and enjoyment. Being out with like-minded photography geeks, sharing thoughts and feelings about the visit, and generally enjoying a bit of social is what makes doing these trips together so much more rewarding than if you went solo every time.
As for Roydon Common, see you again some time!
Onwards and upwards…