When the autumn breeze, finally strips the last leaves from the trees, and winter folds its icy grip firmly round the Peak District, the landscape surrenders to the elements and takes a change for the better.
Although this is the season which most people attribute to be the most depressing and gloomy, it is positively the best for being out in the crisp cold air walking and taking photographs. Especially ones, which require stunning light, a stripped canvas, frozen conditions and possibly the best medium of all, snow.
Fighting to rise up out of bed at 6am just to get one magical shot of a Peak sunrise slowly creeping over an Eastern edge or running round the valleys until I have found another location to get the light as it passes over the Western fringe spreading its tendrils over the landscape, it’s a lottery on what type of picture you are going to get.
A great setting in the winter is the use of a stripped wood or even a singular barren tree. Now trees in summer look resplendent, magnificent and strong. They provide a green backdrop for a green foreground on another green rolling backdrop. Yet in the winter they become more interesting, with a look that is somehow more sinister, haunted, seemingly frightened in total contrast to their summer guise.
There is something about the winter days that gives a magical, strange and wondrous presence to the Peak that, as nice as summer is, wins hands down in the photography stakes. Couple the bleakness of an autumnal moor and the shades of brown, red bracken and leaves with the fantastic light we get on bitter days, a photographer could not ask for more.
As the arc of the sun becomes more acute and smaller, shadows lengthen, and the light becomes low and majestic. But it’s not just the sun setting, which can show up such beauty, sunrise can be just, if not as dazzling with its uncommon and fitful waves of light.
Last year I made the effort to rise early on Christmas Day to Windy Corner at Stoke near Grindleford, and the trek was well worth the early start. The contrasting white snow that had covered the country, stood out against the crest of harsh black gritstone edges and the gnarled trees that grow out from the frozen earth. Altogether it made a perfect setting for the white cold moon hovering in the dark sky, which made way for the bright yellow sphere of the sun to appear and light up the land over Curbar Edge, causing this photographer to realise that this was indeed the best way to blow away the cobwebs of the previous evening.
The magnificent grit edges of Froggatt and Baslow peeked out from the top of the cold mist, which rose from the streams and rivers like some large primordial phantom. The church bells in Calver began to peel and the twinkling lights of the villages appeared in the valley as people were waking up to their Christmas presents.
The biting wind on my face told me it was a suitable time to end my day's love affair with the outdoors as bitter fingers tinged with hot aches deep in my fleece, and the lure of a bacon sandwich saw me head on down the hill hoping I had a decent capture or two for my efforts with the Nikon.
At a slightly more reasonable time yesterday, was a walk over the eastern gritstone edges of White, Curbar and Froggatt with the wind biting hard, however the light was up to its old tricks as the sun sank down over the hills of the White Peak. In the last hour of sunlight is often when the best results are gained from these edges and we timed it perfect. As the wind died down and with the sun on our faces, we walked past bluebells and blue tits as spring started its takeover of the winter landscape, yet the fire was still very welcoming when we reached the The Grouse Inn at Longshaw.
The seasons in the Peak will always give a natural canvas on which to see the National Park through a camera lens. But even though spring gives up its colour in the flowering bluebells and daffodils, the Summer months give us a few days of glorious weather and the clear cobalt skies, those months will never match that of the Peak autumnal and winter show. The bleak winter deep freeze may have many of you reaching for the hot water bottle, but for many others we grasp the camera at the chance to get out in the superlative light and see the Peak at its most glorious.
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