So you may have noticed that the last few weeks has been slightly grey, damp, miserable and generally enough to make any photographer go stir crazy.

It may seem like I haven’t been going out taking images but unfortunately I had…just you don’t get to see the images I take where nothing happens.

In the last few weeks I had been to Carl Wark near Hathersage several times, I have visited Carl Wark a few times over the last few months with nothing to show for it but I was determined recently to get something but the sunset was always shot down with a big bank of cloud within the last hour blocking any chance of light.

Anyway, December 29th came around and the forecast for the first time in a long time looked good for the following day….where to go out for sunrise though?!

I spent a lot of time contemplating this and realised I’m actually running out of places to go for sunrise unless we’re looking at Saddleworth or somewhere with a serious walk in (saving them for wild camping) so after texting Stephen Elliott (a friend and local photographer) and after a lot of debating I suggested to give Carl Wark a try…I felt sort of reluctant after I had suggested it but I did want to put the location to bed. Carl Wark Sunrise it was to be though!

Anyway, the next morning I had turned up in plenty of time. I got there at around 06:50 and sunrise wasn’t until 08:30. I stood around and realised when confirming with the sunrise compass the sun had moved around a lot since my last sunrise try and would make it difficult to shoot. No worries though, it would just mean some careful composition.

Where the sun was coming the sky was quite clear and to get a composition meant being a little further away from where I wanted to be when the light started to light Higger Tor than I wanted to be so I chose to not really take any photos of the sun coming over the hills itself, however I did stick around and I liked this location.

I particularly liked the cloud turning colour and the fact that you could make a good point of Higger Tor being so prominent with some nice foreground interest. I took a variety of shots here and while I have one with all the rocks lit up I much prefer this one with the light just catching which in my opinion gives it more depth: