A trip up to Devils Dyke to catch the Sunset over the Fulking Escarpment, a National Trust site on the South Downs. On the way up, there was this great light on the rolling hills to the west of the Devils Dyke road. I’ve named this photo above as Lines over Enfield valley, based on my trusty OS map.
Waiting for the right light is key to getting a good photograph. It’s also very difficult to keep glare off the camera lens when shooting into the sun. I use a technique where you cover the sun in one shot and take another shot and blend the two images together. You can see a video of this in more detail with this really helpful video from Steve Perry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9DggKGiLb8
Fulking Escarpment Detail, 2015
I sometimes use a 2x extender on my 70-200mm lens, to expand the telephoto focal length to 400mm. This really compresses some of the lines created by hard, low light on the hillside.
Sunset over Fulking Escarpment, 2015
Here’s the final image, the sunset over the escarpment at the optimal time, around 20 minutes after I arrived and set up the shot. This is again shot using the ‘thumbs down’ technique of covering the sun in one image and blending images together. Just look at that orange glow in the sky!
Here are a few more shots as the sunset continued towards it’s end. The final shot (below) was shot again using the 400mm focal length to enlarge the sun by compressing the landscape as explained above.
