What typifies the month of August is heather on the heath. Ashdown forest on the high weald in East Sussex is a good location for heather in August. What follows is a couple of attempts to photograph heather on the heath during August 2022 on the Ashdown Forest landscape.

Photographing Ashdown Forest

Over the last few years have visited Ashdown Forest a couple of times and not really come away with any good landscape photos of the location. The first trip was during the winter of 2019 around the Camp Hill area. The second trip was August 2020 around the Stone Hill area for a sunrise. Made another trip April 2021 to photograph the waterfall there. The last trip was in August 2021 and that was to photograph the heather around Old Lodge. Its a large area to cover and that’s partly the problem, the above trips were more scouting Ashdown forest hoping to get lucky. Ashdown forest is a difficult landscape to photograph. Its mostly a wide expanse of open heathland. Subjects and focal points can be hard to find.

Ashdown Forest Return

It was a hot Saturday evening and decided to take another trip to Ashdown forest to photograph the heather during golden hour and sunset. The area renowned for heather on Ashdown forest is the Old Lodge. But I wanted to scout a large area on the other side of the B2026 between Old Lodge and Black Hill. Initially parked up near Old Lodge to check the state of the heather and sure enough it was in full bloom but no focal points to speak of. So headed across the road to Black Hill.

Ashdown Forest Sunset

Initially just followed the Wealdway northwards towards Five Hundred Acre wood. The area had potential but what could be good viewpoints were cut off by gorse bush. Off the beaten path it is pretty much wilderness.

Managed to find a few small animal tracks into the heather and found a nice viewpoint looking north towards Hartfield. Nice patch of purple heather in the foreground, some scots pines catching the golden sidelight in the midground. Would have been better if the Scots pines were breaking the horizon adding a strong visual anchor. Could not work the angles though for that. Where there were strong subjects there was no paths and no heather. Where there was heather there was no strong subjects.

Photographing the Heather

With the setting sun at a right angle using a polariser removed reflective light and saturated the colours. Although this increased the shutter speed. With foreground foliage you need depth of field i.e. small aperture in combination with focus stacking. If there is a breeze or worst you are going to need faster shutter speeds, in these situations a high ISO is your friend.

What I was thinking though, with these viewpoints of the heath and heather, they would look better at dawn with some mist down there in the valley. At the time what I thought was key was the golden hour low directional light hitting the heather. Still, it was primarily a scouting trip so then returned to the Old Lodge area to witness sunset to the north west but missed it. Also missed blue hour amongst the heather where the sky turned purple. Google Photos Ashdown Forest sunset.

Ashdown Forest Blue Hour

Returned a week later to photograph the heather during dawn light. Something had to do, out of bed at 3:30AM, its around a 50 min drive from my location and then around 20 min walk from nearest carpark. This time parked a bit nearer the intended location at Gills Lap carpark. On the way had to stop a few times as deer in the road. Parked up then headed roughly in the same direction to the same location as the dusk shoot. Again just putting myself in the general area without a specific composition in mind, would just react to the conditions I found. This is not ideal when the light is changing by the minute.

Despite the relentless hot weather there was some mist down in the valley. At this point had to setup and shoot. In this moment there was zero wind so with the low light could use a long exposure and not worry about motion blur. The above photo was my first shot bracketed once for the highlights in the sky another for the shadows on the ground. Then changed lens from 24-70mm to wide angle 16-35mm.

Sunrise Golden Hour

As the sun rose thought the images would get progressively better but they got worse. Had a head full of ideas wanted to try – perspective blending, focal range blending not to mention panoramic, the need to focus stack and bracket! Too much! glad I got that first shot! Just go with the flow, don’t overwork the scene. Without thinking my eye naturally saw the best composition.

I not realise at the time for purple heather the best light is during blue hour. Look at the image above and how much more the purple colours are saturated due to the cool tones of blue hour. As the warm tones of the golden sunlight reflected off the cool tones of the purple heather, they look a little washed out. I was being pestered by flies and midges, also as the sun rose the breeze picked up so was getting some motion blur problems with the heather in the foreground. As with the dusk shoot, should have put on a polariser to cut down on reflections. Obviously my brain does not work so well early morning. Google Photos Ashdown Forest Dawn

Beautiful Morning

Did a bigger scout of the area as the sun rose and got too bright, but the above is still the best composition to date. Not much longer to photograph the heather on Ashdown forest up by Old Lodge they were dying out. Had a long drive back, dawn shoots and driving long distances don’t mix well. Still come away with my best landscape photograph of Ashdown Forest to date. Another beautiful Summer August morning I wont forget and don’t get better than that if you come away with an image that is better than what you shot before. Progress in the face of making so many mistakes.

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