The alarm clock woke me up just over an hour before sunrise. Fortunately, it was a very respectable 6:45am. The room was still dark and I couldn’t see any indication of the rising sun through the crack I had left between the curtains. But I convinced myself out of bed and pulled them back. It was very foggy outside. Damn. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was there with a couple of other photographer friends, and we had all planned to meet at 7am, then I probably would have just gone back to bed. But I wasn’t sure what my friends had decided and I didn’t want to be the one who seemed like a fair-weather photographer, so I got dressed and knocked on their door.

It was very miserable outside and difficult to believe that we’d make a single image in the fog as we walked down the steep road in Robin Hood’s Bay down to the beach. We knew that the tide would be on its way out, leaving a pristine beach in its wake, but when we arrived at the water’s edge, it was higher than we had thought it would be. We could still get onto the sand, but there were only a few metres between the breakwall and the waves.

My friends immediately got their cameras out, but I was having difficulty getting inspired. There were no vistas to be seen and there was not much grabbing my attention in the foreground amongst the few rocks and small tidal pools. Everything was a dull and dreary grey due to the fog. The tide was moving out at quite a pace and as more was becoming revealed to us on the shoreline, slowly I was finding patterns and rocks that were interesting enough for me to start clicking the shutter.

When all of a sudden I turned around and saw that the fog was beginning to lift in the distance, exposing the tops of the cliffs across the bay. Things started moving really quickly now as the fog swirled around and changed every second. Quite often with landscape photography, you can work at a snail’s pace. Nothing much is changing and you can really spend your time thinking, focusing and waiting to get the image right. But then suddenly something happens and you have to crank up 10 gears and switch into autopilot as you see opportunities unfolding and disappearing in front of you within seconds and you don’t have the luxury of contemplation. Today was one of those mornings of the two extremes. Perhaps surprisingly, both are satisfying, although I wouldn’t want to be working at 100mph all the time, not least because it’s during the slow considered photography that you can really learn and put your thoughts into practice. But you can sometimes surprise yourself at what you manage to record on film during that manic phase simply because you didn’t have the time to fully take it in and register it at the time.

The scene in front of us changed so much during that last hour or so. The sun rose above the horizon, turning everything a rich purple, the fog slowly evaporated away, leaving a clear and beautiful day, completely different to that which we woke up to. And to think how close I was to just rolling over and going back to sleep. I will remember this morning each time I struggle to convince myself out of bed.

After the long drive down to Devon, I parked my car in the car park at Covelly. I was planning to do a quick recce that evening, and then take photographs the following day. However, as I sat in my car, glad that my long journey was over, I made a spur of the moment decision. If I was going to walk the 3km to Mouthmill beach, where Blackchurch rock can be found, then maybe I should make a proper trip of it. Take my tent and wild camp overnight to be able to photograph both the dusk and dawn light. So I stocked up with supplies in the Clovelly visitor centre and started my way down the coastal path.

The walk wasn’t particularly strenuous but with the tent, sleeping bag and a big bottle of water in my rucksack, it was a lot more tiring that I imagined it would be. However, when I saw the beach from the cliff-top just come into view, I felt my heart beat get faster in anticipation.

I finally arrived at the beach and dropped all my gear with a huge sigh of relief and throbbing shoulders. Full of anticipation and excitement, I rummaged around in my rucksack to find my camera and quickly made my way out to the edge of the water. The tide was receding but was not quite far out enough to enable me to get a clear shot of Blackchurch rock with the already low sun streaming through the gaps in the rock. I took a few photographs and then decided to set up camp before it got too dark. At high tide, the sea comes all the way up to the cliff face, so camping on the beach was out of the question or I would be flooded and washed away overnight. However, the cliff wasn’t too high and someone had conveniently built a small wall at the top of it that could act as a windbreak for my small tent. So I quickly pitched up in a corner by the path down to the beach and headed back to the shoreline.

The beach is covered in huge rounded pebbles and amazing rock strata that lies across the length of the beach from one side of the bay to the other, creating very useful lead-in lines with small rock-pools forming as the tide ebbs. But as the sun rapidly set, the sea was still not far out enough to enable me to capture the photograph I was after. So after a beautiful sunset and afterglow, as two fishermen made their way onto the beach, I headed back up to the top of the cliff to get my head down ready for an early start capturing the sunrise.

My mobile rang me awake at 5am. I lay there for a second, not wanting to open my eyes, and for a moment I wished for grey leaden skies so I could go back to sleep. But as I unzipped the entrance to my tent just a little, I could already see the sky beginning to lighten as a clear day dawned. Immediately, I forgot my tiredness, jumped out of bed and headed back to the beach for the dawn. The light was truly amazing. The sky was lightening to a pale blue with a small band of pale pink just above the horizon. It was one of the most beautiful, yet subtle, dawns I had ever seen. However, overnight the tide had come in and had only started it’s retreat a little while ago, so the Blackchurch rock photograph I was after was even further away than it had been the evening before. But that didn’t stop me from firing my shutter. The scene was amazingly tranquil. Knowing that the majority of people were missing the beauty that was unfolding in front of me made me feel very privileged.

However, soon the sun had risen too high in the sky and forced me to put my camera away. So I packed up my tent and headed back to Clovelly for a filling breakfast.

After several years of waiting and planning, I never got the photograph I was after. But at least now I have a better idea of how to get it next time.

I was heading out to Blea Tarn, a location that I had researched on the map and knew would be a great dawn location. The drive there seemed to take forever despite the relatively few miles as the light constantly changed around me. As I turned out of Ambleside, I could see low mist hanging in the valleys. I hoped that the mist would still be present when I arrived at Blea Tarn. As I turned the corner and drove over a bridge, I caught sight of the pink glow illuminating the sky and reflecting in the river in my rear view mirror and prayed that this colour wouldn’t disappear before I reached my destination.

I finally arrived at the car park by Blea Tarn. A camper van was already parked up and I wondered whether I had been beaten to the lake or whether the occupant was curled up all snugly inside. I got out of the car and made my way down to the edge of the tarn. I could see nobody else around, and started to set up my camera.

The colour in the sky had vanished and there was no mist swirling over the tarn. I really hoped that despite getting up so early, I hadn’t missed all the dawn action. I was contemplating how and if I was going to proceed, when I suddenly heard a voice. I turned around to see a man with a couple of dogs walking over the top of a mound. The dogs came bounding in my direction, sniffing around my tripod. When the owner finally caught up with them, he gave me the cheery news that I had just missed the best of the light, for it had now turned flat and uninteresting. Great. I had got up early and I still missed the dawn light at its best.

We started chatting, as there was no reason to take any photographs in the foreseeable future. The dog owner turned out to be a fellow photographer and local resident. There’s nothing like a local to give you all the information you could not easily find out yourself about a location. He told me the names of the mountains I could see around me (saving me hours poring over a map with a compass trying to work it out myself) and said that despite the fact that the light was very flat right now, once the sun had risen a little more, experience told him that it might then light up the focus mountains behind the tarn, Langdale Pikes. The more we chatted, the less the light did anything. It seemed to be getting no better at all as it was making its slow ascent into the sky. After a couple of hours, the light hadn’t changed at all and the dogs were getting impatient. We decided that this obviously wasn’t the morning for great photography and I packed up my camera without having taken a shot. We walked a couple of meters back towards the car park when something made us turn around. Suddenly there was light illuminating the fells to the side of the tarn. We both looked at each other, shocked at the sudden change in the conditions. It wasn’t anything spectacular, not worth getting our cameras out for, but it had proved us both wrong when we had said that things were not going to improve only a few minutes earlier. As we stood there contemplating what to do, the light got better and better, to the point when contemplating whether to just go back for a shower and some breakfast was quickly put out of our minds. We both knew that we were going to stay.

We headed back to the waters edge and got out our cameras, again. The sun was side-lighting the landscape in front of the tarn, bringing out the detail in the rocks. It was looking beautiful. However, Langdale Pikes behind them was still looking flat and somewhat blue in the shadow. I took a few shots of the reflections of the side-lighted rocks, while my new friend set up his camera a little further round the tarn. Suddenly, Langdale Pikes was lit with the same gorgeous side-lighting and my shutter went into overdrive.

I shot two rolls of film before we decided that it was finally time for breakfast. The dogs had started to get impatient and our tummies were beginning to rumble. We had, afterall, been up for over three hours already!

As we headed back to the car park, a milk float drove past. The first sign of other life that we had seen. The world was beginning to wake up now and the early hours of the morning, a time known to few others except landscape photographers, was over. Breakfast was beckoning for both humans and dogs.

The weather forecast the previous evening had said that I would again be waking up to more rain on my final morning in the region, so I decided to have a relative lie in, waking up only to eat breakfast at the B&B and then make the long drive back home. It hadn’t however been a wasted trip. I had undertaken quite a good recce of the area and had made lots of notes on good viewpoints and which times of day would be best to take photographs of them. But not having exposed any film is always a disappointment and despite my best and cheerful effort, I couldn’t help but feel that it was somewhat a failed visit.

However, when I opened my eyes at 7am, the light trying to burst through the drawn curtains of my room gave me a glimmer of hope. It seemed quite strong and bright, and I was full of excitement that possibly, hopefully, the girl on the weather forecast had got it wrong the night before. I leapt out of bed and eagerly pulled back the side of the curtain to see what it really was like outside. A bright blue sky with a few high wispy cirrus clouds greeted me, and I was overjoyed! This was finally my chance. I had been given this one opportunity to take some photographs before I had to leave later that morning. I quickly put on some clothes, without stopping to even brush my teeth or my hair, and grabbed my camera bag and headed out of the door. I had spent some of the time that it had been raining by scouting for locations, and there was a great spot just down the road that I knew would be perfect with the morning light. I drove the mile or so to the side of the twin lake Llynnau Mymbyr where, on the opposite shore, the Snowdon Horseshoe was being bathed in morning sunshine.

There were some low clouds encircling the Horseshoe, and with every passing minute, they would swirl and move around the mountain creating new images. Sometimes completely obscuring the mountain, and at other times giving only a tantalising glance.

I took out my camera, loaded it with film, and headed from where the car was parked at the side of the road, down a small slop to the edge of the lake only a few meters away. The viewpoint is a classic photograph, probably one of the most famous of the area, so the challenge was always going to be to take a picture that was slightly more unusual. The view from the side of the road is so good that many people fail to walk the few short meters to the side of the lake where the foreground is so much better. Around most of the shore are large boulders, but in some places, wild flowers are the main interest.

The lake itself was perfectly still, reflecting the mountains on the opposite shore. However, as I was setting up my tripod ready to take my first photograph, a couple of swimmers decided to take an early morning dip and dived in just beside me. Slightly frustrated by them disturbing the perfection and swimming straight through the centre of my field of view, I decided to move slightly further round the lake. This was my first and last chance to get some pictures, and I wasn’t going to let anyone else compromise my search for the elusive picture.

After half an hour by the lake, the light had lost its fantastic early morning quality, so I decided to head back to the B&B for a shower and some breakfast, before it was too late. By the time I came out of my shower, the clouds had rolled in and it had turned into yet another grey and miserable day. But at least I had finally exposed some film.

I had come to Scotland to capture some classic winter mountain landscapes. Scottish weather is unpredictable at the best of times, and while my main worry before I arrived was that there might be too much snow for me to safely get to where I would want to be, the reality was actually that a touch more of the white stuff on the mountain tops wouldn’t have gone amiss. But you work with what you’ve been given. At least small amounts of snow and ice did linger in the deeper gullies giving a bit of interest and depth to the mountain faces.

I drove the few miles from the B&B to Rannoch Moor in the Highlands, my chosen location for the day, and it was a fantastic morning. I had never seen conditions like it before, despite numerous previous trips to the area during the winter. In fact, so magical was the landscape in front of me that as soon as I saw it pull into view through my car windscreen, I let out a squeal of excitement and felt like a child in a toy shop. Wanting to take it all in, yet being too restless to focus properly on any one thing. Just spinning around and around in amazement. The sun was shining down from a rich blue sky, and on the ground, everything was white and sparkling, as a hoar frost had coated every surface. A light mist hung in the glens below the mountain peaks, and the whole scene looked unreal. I had never witnessed hoar frost before, although I’d obviously seen it in other people’s pictures. But the reality of it really took my breath away. It looked like I’d stepped into an infrared photograph where all the trees and bushes were a stark and bright white.

I stopped the car by the side of the road, attached my camera to my tripod, hung my light meter round my neck, stuffed my pockets with my filters, pulled on my pink woolly hat and bounded over the small mound between the car and Lochan na h’Achlaise – a small glacial loch which has appeared in numerous people’s photographs. Although I carry all my camera equipment in a rucksack, where practical, I try to leave the bag in the car and just take out with me what I feel that I need at the time. I prefer to carry everything close at hand instead of having to faff around with opening rucksacks on wet ground and rummaging to find what I am after. Luckily, Rannoch Moor lies right on the A82 to Fort William. It’s the major trunk road running through the Western Highlands and one of the most beautiful parts of the country lies right there. Just metres to the side of it. In my haste and excitement it wasn’t until I reached the shore of the lochan that I realised I had forgotten to bring any film with me and had to dash back to the car. I took a deep breath to calm and relax myself, forcing me to think about what I was about to do. The last thing I wanted was to run around like a headless chicken just snapping away because I wanted to record everything. That would only lead to disaster with too many poor pictures taken with far too little thought. It is much better to return home having only taken one fantastic photograph, than a whole film of mediocre and boring ones. I decided to start with the classic view of Lochan nah h’Achlaise with the Black Mount behind it, and climbed over the mound again, heading towards the water.

The amazing weather conditions hadn’t gone unnoticed by other photographers in the area, as it seemed they had all swarmed to this infamous beauty spot, with no less than 6 of us all vying for the best viewpoints along the lochan’s eastern shore. It was almost as if we were on a conveyor belt. As soon as one photographer left a particular spot with a great view, someone else moved over and took their place. I smiled at one of the photographers and we had the familiar “What camera are you using then?” and “Great weather, isn’t it?” conversations before parting ways and continuing to take photos just a few metres apart.

Later on that day, I spotted presumably the same group of photographers huddling around the eastern shore of Loch Tulla as the sun was about to make its final downward descent. But I wouldn’t follow the crowd this time. I knew a better location and continued to head round the other side of the loch where the colours of the setting sun would illuminate the mountains across the water with the day’s last golden rays instead.

The peak in question is Mam Tor, in the dramatic Dark Peak. It’s a well-known landmark in the area for more reasons than just its imposing presence. It’s also called the “Shivering Mountain” as it experiences frequent landslides. The sedimentary rock that it is composed of was laid down in layers, millions of years ago when Britain was under a tropical ocean. However, these layers are unstable and after periods of heavy rain, the water lubricates them and sections of the east side run down into the valley below.

But it is the view from the top that currently draws my attention the most, not its geology (although I am curious about that too). Standing on the summit of Mam Tor, you can follow a ridge that runs over to the peaks of Hollins Cross and on to Lose Hill, standing proud between Hope Valley and the Vale of Edale. This ridge runs from the southwest to the northeast, so during the winter months, the rising sun bathes the eastern side of the ridge in golden morning light. With a bit of mist lingering in the valley below, this was the image I was hoping to capture during my recent visit.

So, as I set off in the pre-dawn darkness from my warm and cosy B&B in Castleton, I assessed the possibilities for a taking a successful photograph that morning. Although it was dark, I could see that the valley was shrouded in thick fog. While at first glance, this may seem to be a disaster, I was hoping that the summit of Mam Tor, and the other nearby peaks, would all be bursting above the top of the fog. So perhaps I wouldn’t get the gentle mist I had in my mind, but I could maybe capture the peaks surrounding the valley as golden sun-lit islands above a sea of cloud.

I parked my car in a nearby car park, grabbed my kit from the boot, and headed up the hill in the darkness. The fog was thick and as I followed the path to the summit, I was becoming slightly anxious, as I could see no evidence that I may be nearing the top of it. Also, the higher I climbed, the stronger the wind became. It was rushing past me from a southeast direction, exactly where I was hoping that the sun would be bursting through at any time. This caused me a bit of a dilemma. I only had my lightweight, and therefore not so stable, tripod with me, so would have to use my body as a shield against the strong wind. Yet the wind was blowing from exactly the direction I was hoping to be shooting. The only solution would have to be a compromise of opening up the aperture of my lens in order to make the shutter speed as fast as possible. However, this would result in a smaller depth of field and the picture would not be as sharp as I would like it to be.

But it was the fog that was causing me my biggest concern. Although I had now reached the summit, the fog was still as thick and grey as it had seemed from below in the valley. I huddled behind a rock, sheltering as best I could from the biting wind, and tucked into a banana as I patiently waited for the sun to rise and hopefully start burning away some of the fog.

People sometimes wonder how some photographers are so lucky to have caught such dramatic or stunning weather conditions and light in their photographs. While to an extent this is down to luck, you can also do your best to stack the odds in your favour by paying close attention to weather forecasts, calculating from which angle and at what time the sun will be rising or setting, checking out tide times, if you are on the coast, and being on location during the best hours for amazing light. But at the end of the day, no matter how much preparation you make, you still have to rely on Mother Nature to play her part in giving you what you wish for in order to make that photograph.

Unfortunately, luck was not on my side again, and the fog failed to clear during the hour that I was on the peak, so the photograph still only exists in my mind’s eye. But I will return to the location another time to try again.

Despite being a landscape photographer, I struggle out of bed in the morning as much as the next person does. When the sun hasn’t risen and the central heating hasn’t kicked in yet, it’s so much easier to just turn over in bed and decide to head out on another morning instead, and I must admit to having done that more times than I probably should have done. But when, like now, the calendar is nearing its shortest day, the early starts are at a much more respectable time and clear, crisp mornings are not to be passed up on without a very good reason.

I had never been to Great Gaddesden, or the neighbouring tiny hamlet of Water End, in Hertfordshire, before. The early morning drive out there would serve as both a recce of the area and hopefully produce one or two good photographs too. Some previous research had called the village “a photographer’s paradise” and I was hoping that this would prove true. I was not disappointed. The village itself is a visual feast, with many old buildings and wonderful architecture, like the 19th century medieval-style arched bridge at Water End. But it is the river that runs through the centre of the village that is its crowning glory. On this early morning, the reed beds bordering the river had frosted over, with each individual reed glinting in the light of the rising sun. I tentatively stepped onto the reeds to test if the frost had frozen them just enough to hold my weight, and I literally walked on the water to get closer to the partially frozen river itself. Ducks were swimming on it where they still could, and the pink sky caused by the rising sun was reflecting on the ice. But the most hypnotising of all was the light mist swirling over the river as the sun’s weak rays warmed it, giving the place an ethereal tranquillity.

The river itself is actually a rare chalk stream. The chalk bed lying underneath the stream filters the water and makes it pure and clear, which enables it to support various plants and wildlife including some of the more rare species, including the water vole. Although as I didn’t notice any, they were presumably all still asleep while I was there! Around the stream at Great Gaddesden are flood meadows – made up of wet grassland and marsh. Again another wildlife haven. Many birds and wildfowl over-winter in these meadows, and at 6:30 in the morning, there is little to be heard except for their morning calls.

If it weren’t for the speed of the rising sun, as well as the freezing water of the stream slowly beginning to seep in through my walking boots, forcing me to keep focussed, it would have been very easy to loose myself to the beauty and tranquillity of the place. Every step further forward through the reeds revealed a new and delightful take on the overall scene; and the sun continually climbing higher in the sky constantly shifted the highlights and shadows making every second a different breathtaking vista from the last.

The sun was rising fast and with each press of the shutter, I had to take another meter reading to make sure that my exposures were correct. Fiddling around with neutral density filters with numb fingers while standing precariously on a frozen stream in the early hours is definitely not the easiest of tasks. But the contrast between the bright sky and the land, which had not yet been bathed by the sun’s golden morning light, was extreme and the only way to make sure that I captured both the colour in the sky and the detail of the foreground reeds which were in shadow was to use the graduated filters.

However, by 8:30am, the golden hour of post-sunrise had given way to a more ordinary morning light, and it was time to make my way back to the car, trying to get the blood circulating again in my frozen fingers, and head back for the warmth of my now centrally heated home for a well deserved hot brunch.