One way and another I have been on quite a lot of hilltops with my camera recently and I thought it would be interesting to gather some of my pictures from these trips to see what I have learned. I will start with a recent trip to the Stiperstones in Shropshire and then I will rewind to last Autumn before proceeding through Spring into Summer on local hilltops. It has been a roller-coaster ride.
‘Standing Tall’ shows an outcrop of the shattered Quartzite on the Stiperstones ridge. Around it lies the rock scree created by this slow erosion process. The sunlight is coming from the left which generates shadows and helps to create a greater sense of depth.
I positioned myself so that the fallen rocks create a diagonal line from the bottom right into the image. Having explored these rocks our eye is drawn to the scenery beyond which gives us a sense of our height and the fact that these rocks are on top of a substantial hill. I like this potentially late reveal of our height.
Now let’s rewind to Autumn 2020 when I was at Symonds Yat rock in the Wye Valley. This view of the river Wye has been on a thousand calendars and introduces us to another aspect of hilltop photography which is the birds-eye view perspective.
In this case the light is coming from the right and bringing some life to the late Autumn colour on the wooded hillside on the left. I chose to include some foreground detail so that we are not floating in mid air but looking down from the viewpoint.
The snaking river takes our eye through the scenery to the far hills which are receding into the distance. The muting of colours into the distance helps to create a sense of depth. Another close-by viewpoint gives a view of Symonds Yat village with the river winding between wooded hills. These set scenes are well known and familiar to us. The challenge perhaps is to find some less famous viewpoints of our own.
This image; ‘Tree Lines’ is a picture that I took in late April while we were walking from Llynheilyn lake west of Kington. Instead of the river Wye snaking through the scenery we see the A481 at the start of its journey to Builth Wells.
What really caught my eye were the silhouettes of the leafless trees along the road and the field boundaries. The Spring sun is low to the left and creates shadows on the first field. I have included the edge of the ridge that I am standing on in the same way that I included the wall at Symonds Yat rock.
The texture of the mid-ground fields is like velvet. The colour of the far hills is again more muted and beyond them just visible is a grey ridge. These subtle changes of colour combine to create a sense of depth.
The next picture; ‘Two Hills’ taught me a lesson about hilltop Photography. This image is cropped out of a much larger image and contains 90% of the interest in the larger image.
This picture was taken at the end of May from Hergest Ridge next to Kington. After my initial success with ‘Tree Lines’ I took a lot of pictures of hilltop views which were disappointing when I got them home on the computer. They had lots of sky, tiny hills and lacked the interest that I thought I was capturing when I was out and about.
With this picture taken at Hergest Ridge I realised that I needed to isolate the things that were of interest much more. In effect I needed to take my long lens so that I could zoom in to the detail.
I think that ‘Two Hills’ works as a picture because of the light and shadow on these hills. I particularly like the pocket of sunlight on the field bottom right. There is no strong leading line taking us into the image but the overlapping layers give a sense of depth. Those layers are more clearly defined because of the sun on the hillsides and the shadow inbetween. A house in the mid-ground gives a sense of scale. The original (uncropped) image was taken at 35 mm but the crop has created an image that would have required a focal length of say 110 mm. I decided that on my next hilltop walk I would only take my long lens.
‘Sunlit Slope’ is a fairly drastic departure from my usual style. We were in the Black Mountains just along the ridge from Hay Bluff. There were dark storm clouds to the South and a lot of white cloud above us. There were layers of ridges to the West and very few features in the landscape. After my experience at Hergest Ridge I only had my long lens!
This image was taken at 140 mm. The subject of it is the splash of sunlight on the hillside which I saw moving along the ridge. I waited for it to be close to the knot of cloud and tried to separate the white cloud from the ridge with the dark sky. It was very windy and quite cold and I was hand holding the camera. By going down to ISO 400 I got a shutter speed of 1/640 sec to give me a chance of avoiding blur.
The long lens reduces the depth of field drastically so the foreground and background are out of focus but the sunlight slope is focused. The small dark blobs are trees and the faint diagonal line is a path up the middle ridge. My conclusion was that we should really stick to smaller hills.
One final picture completes my hilltop adventures. ‘Brown Clee Ponies’ is taken at 300 mm on my long lens. Brown Clee is a fairly prominent hill in Shropshire just north of Titterstone Clee. I found that the photographic opportunities were limited although it is on a popular walking route.
I spotted these ponies about a quarter of a mile away I reckon. They were tiny but I had my long lens and there was nothing else of interest so I tried to get a picture. This is the final image out of many and the only one that worked I think.
I found that if I put the ponies in the middle of the viewfinder then I had half a picture of boring heathland so I migrated the horses to the bottom of the frame and followed them as they ambled around in a little group.
The success of this picture is that one pony is looking towards us and one is looking towards the view which piles up and fills most of the frame. I was above the ponies so my camera was tilted down, not pointed towards the horizon.
The light was flat and dull on this day but we still get a sense of depth from the diminishing colours and also the changing sizes of the trees as they go further back into the scenery.
I am looking forward to more hilltop photography if the weather picks up again. In a strange way the apparent lack of opportunity in some of these locations can result in some zany creativity. Especially if I only take the long lens.