Oh, the woes of the landscape photographer! Thirteen of us journeyed to the New Forest, all with the idea of capturing glorious purple heather basking in the golden light of a magnificent sunset. It was not to be. The day had looked promising but as evening approached, so did a large bank of black cloud. We walked the short distance to Mogshade Pond, but following one of the hottest and driest summers on record the pond was not much more than a puddle. There was not even any livestock that we could persuade to pose decorously in the middle of it! In any case Mogshade is more suited to a winter dawn than a summer sunset. With some deciding to stay and scout the area, nine of us moved on to Rockford Common. There we did get the vestiges of a red setting sun behind a very angry and threatening sky, but it did not illuminate the landscape as we hoped. Rockford is a good place for dawn and dusk photography, so with that in mind we headed home with some ideas for perhaps another day. It was definitely an evening for following the advice of the landscape photographer Jeremy Walker “Work with what you have got”. Mary
