play misty for me

It’s long been a surprise to me that people complain about the clocks going forward and ‘losing an hour’. We are both ‘larks’ and always wake early (mostly too early), so when the clocks go forward, its actually a relief, as instead of being up and ready to go at 5am, we move to 6 for a while!

The first morning of British Summertime 2018 saw us both wide awake at 6am and, after a brief discussion with our under the bed Alexa, we decided to get up and go out to try and photograph a sunrise.

First surprise of the morning was how cold and frosty it was – the car needed de-icing, everywhere was white and very misty and it was very cold. We had decided to go and see if we could capture anything interesting from one of our regular walks looking out to Winter Hill and Rivington Pike and, after the sun had appeared, walk down to the United Utilities owned reservoirs at Worthington Lakes.

In what is becoming somewhat of a pattern, we were once again dressed incorrectly for the weather conditions. Standing in a field at 6am shrouded in mist before the sun came up was very, very cold – oh, how I wished I had remembered some gloves!

We spent 40 minutes standing watching the sun arrive and what a spectacular sight it was. Our cameras never stopped as we were surrounded by mist, eerily hanging round the trees, and the fields were all white with frost. Beautiful.

Once the sun arrived, the view was transformed with golden light now shining on the mist and illuminating the surroundings.

We walked the 4k route around the lakes, passing fishermen and runners and even some early morning dog walkers.  The air was peaceful apart from the early morning birds singing and surprisingly the two lakes appeared to be in two different climates. The larger lake was bathed in golden sunshine with spectacular reflections of the trees and the wildlife. As we approached the smaller lake it was like stepping back into the artic – completely shrouded in mist with a watery sun just appearing. We met a friendly Robin – they are such a tame bird, photographed Canada geese drifting through the mist (my favourite photographs of the morning) and captured fishermen and walkers who were barely visible.
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We took over 400 photographs in just over an hour and a half and, unusually for us, we loved almost all of them. Newly purchased Luxe Lens pre-sets for Adobe’s Lightroom kept Chris busy for most of the day.  The pre-sets allow you to enhance your photographs in minutes at a very reasonable price. So, apologies to all our Instagram followers as our Instagram feed might get very repetitive for a few weeks!