Cherhill Sunset

Landscape photography is not one of my favourite subjects as it usually depends on the convergence of several elements (light, weather, my busy schedule) to produce a reasonable image. Nevertheless, I decided to take a chance the other evening and climb to the top of Cherhill Down to take in the sunset and test my new 14-24mm lens.

The afternoon weather had been a bit hit and miss and I was pretty doubtful that I'd achieve much, but I also wanted to take the opportunity to scout for the local owl population at the same time. Once at the top, the sun broke through, shading the vista with beautiful red and orange streaks. Instinctively, I whipped out not my DSLR, but my iPhone to take an HDR shot to send home to the wife who was busy looking after mini-me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Because the light can change in an instant and the minute I switched to my camera, bang! It was gone.

Luckily, it slipped out of the cloud again to produce the shot below which saw me take gold in the SWPP August awards, with the image going forward to their annual awards to be announced in January 2011. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!