Photographing Fell Landscapes in Soft Light

Why the Fells Look Their Best Before Breakfast

Anyone who has walked the Lakeland fells knows the feeling: you crest a rise at midday, the view is enormous, and your photograph is flat and disappointing. The reason is rarely the view. It is the light. Between roughly ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, the sun sits high enough to carve hard shadows across every crag, gill and scree slope. Contrast runs away from you, colour drains from the distances, and the landscape turns into a jumble of black and white with very little in between.

Soft light is different. At dawn and dusk the sun travels low and long across the fells, so shadows become gentle gradients rather than sharp edges. Haze and atmospheric perspective soften the far ridges, and the whole scene fits comfortably inside the range your camera can actually record. If you take only one piece of advice from this article, take this: plan your days around the two hours after sunrise and the two hours before sunset, and treat the middle of the day as walking time rather than photography time.

Planning Your Window Around the Weather

Soft light is not guaranteed simply by setting an alarm. In the Lake District especially, the best conditions often follow a specific pattern, and learning to spot it is half the craft.

• Clear, still mornings in autumn bring valley mist that sits low over Buttermere, Derwentwater and the fields around Grasmere while the tops stand clear above it. Get high enough to look down on the inversion and you will come home with something memorable.
• A day after rain clears often leaves washed air and long-distance visibility. Great Gable from Wasdale, or the Helvellyn range from Loughrigg, will look crisp rather than milky.
• Broken cloud at dusk is your friend. A solid grey lid gives you nothing, and a cloudless sky can be dull, but gaps in the cloud catch colour and bounce warm light onto the fells for twenty minutes or so.
• Wind is the enemy of reflections. For still water at Buttermere or Wast Water, look for a calm morning after a frosty night.

Check the sunrise and sunset times for the week you are staying, then work backwards. In June around Keswick you may need to be on the fell by half past three; in December you can leave the cottage at eight and still catch first light. Either way, allow more time than you think for the walk in.

Kit and Settings for Gentle Light

Low light means slow shutter speeds, and slow shutter speeds mean support. A sturdy tripod is worth more than any lens upgrade. Add a remote release or use the self-timer, switch off image stabilisation when the camera is locked down, and use mirror lock-up if your camera offers it.

As a starting point for dawn and dusk on the fells, try ISO 100, f/8 to f/11, and whatever shutter speed the light gives you. Work in aperture priority if you want speed, or manual if you prefer control. Check the histogram rather than the back-of-camera preview — a slightly dark histogram is easy to lift later, whereas blown highlights on a bright sky are gone for good.

Set white balance manually to daylight or shoot raw and adjust afterwards. Auto white balance will try to neutralise the very warmth that makes dawn and dusk special, leaving you with a technically correct but emotionally flat file. A small torch, spare batteries kept inside a jacket pocket, and a microfibre cloth in a dry bag will save more shots than you would expect.

Getting the Most from a Polarising Filter

A polarising filter is the single most useful accessory for fell photography in soft light, but it rewards understanding rather than blind use.

• Rotate it slowly and watch the viewfinder. The effect varies with your angle to the sun, and it is strongest when you are shooting roughly at right angles to the light.
• Use it to control reflections. On wet rock, slate, tarns and lakeside foliage, a polariser will cut the sheen and reveal colour underneath.
• It deepens subtle colour in heather, bracken and distant ridges without the over-saturated look of heavy editing.
• Be careful with wide lenses. At very wide focal lengths, the sky can darken unevenly across the frame. Ease off the effect or use a slightly longer lens.

Remember that a polariser costs you around two stops of light. In the gloom of a January dusk that matters, so carry the tripod and be prepared to accept a longer exposure.

Composing When the Light Is Low

Soft light flatters shape and texture, so look for subjects that reward those qualities rather than big, obvious drama. A foreground of tussocky grass, a slate wall running into the frame, or the curve of a beck gives the eye somewhere to start before it travels to the distant tops.

Include a sense of depth. Layered ridges are the classic Lakeland composition, and the haze that soft light brings separates them beautifully. Try to keep the brightest part of the sky out of the very corner of the frame, and don't be afraid of a low, quiet image — a moody shot of Blencathra in blue hour can be far more evocative than a bright one taken at noon.

Focus a third of the way into the scene at f/11, or use live view and magnify to check the far ridge is sharp. Bracket your exposures by a stop either side if the sky and foreground are fighting each other; you can blend later or simply pick the best single frame.

Back to the Cottage for Breakfast

The great pleasure of a Lake District cottage holiday is that the best light is right outside the door. Choose somewhere with a drying room and a boot rack, and you can head out in the dark, walk twenty minutes to a viewpoint, and be back for a proper breakfast by nine.

Leave wet kit out to dry rather than bundled in a bag, charge batteries overnight, and keep a flask filled for the walk in. Then set the alarm again for the evening. Two soft-light sessions a day, with a leisurely afternoon in between, is a rhythm that suits the fells perfectly — and it will transform the photographs you bring home.