June 2024 saw a lot of changeable weather, and the day i visited alternated between sunshine and blue skies and dark clouds and rain. I’d taken a few photos of the headgear with an old railway crane in the foreground, as I liked the way the lattice structure on the boom complimented the lattice structure of the headgear, but as I stood talking to my friend Mark, I noticed the sky getting darker and darker save for a small light patch. I quickly grabbed a couple more photos (in landscape format) trying to ensure that the large gear wheel of the crane remained in the frame.

At home I realised that the photo actually worked better in portrait format, fortunately there are plenty of megapixels to play with on the Nikon Z7ii, more than enough for an A3 print which is what I normally print at (and probably enough for A2 which I occasionally do).

The image hasn’t had a huge amount of post processing. The headgear was in silhouette on the original exposure so I’ve masked it and brought out some shadow detail and then done some work on the sky. Getting the contrast right was tricky and I’m not 100% convinced I’ve nailed it so I’ll probably revisit the raw file at a later date to see if I’m still happy with it.