Rippon Tor, Sunrise and Fog

There are few better ways to start the day than by grabbing your camera and heading up to one of your favourite viewpoints on Dartmoor to watch the sunrise. Fortunately, at this time of year sunrise is at a time where it doesn’t feel unnatural to be awake. I think back to some of the early alarm calls I had this summer to get up for sunrise. No one should be waking up at 3:30 am!

I’m fortunate to live close to Dartmoor so when the weather conditions don’t turn out how I expect them, I don’t feel I’ve wasted a lot of time. Even then, any morning up on Dartmoor is a positive experience regardless of how the photos turned out. My most recent visits to Rippon Tor hadn’t yielded the types of images I wanted to get from this location so when I saw fog was forecast one Sunday morning that was all the encouragement I needed to return.

I’d seen forecasts of fog for the Haytor area before but thanks to those micro-climates you find on Dartmoor, I’d often arrive there to find none. My most recent visit was slightly different though as there was a thick bank of fog in the valley below Emsworthy Tor. As exciting as this was, it wasn’t really in a position where I felt I could take a good photograph. If the conditions hadn’t looked more favourable up on Rippon Tor, I might have taken a risk and done some exploring.

As I approached the summit of Rippon Tor, I could see another bank of thick sea fog that would prevent me from getting the light just as the sun broke over the horizon. I had made the poor choice of leaving too early from Rippon Tor last time there was a lot of cloud and fog out at sea, only for the sun to break through as I descended. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time.

In this 5 Minute Photo Adventure, you can see how I got on on my latest visit and I also share with you what I think the secret is to creating a successful landscape photography video. Enjoy!

Do you find it difficult to get accurate fog forecasts? What’s your favourite type of foggy photograph to take? Let me know in the comments below.

Rippon Tor Photographs

Here are the images you see me capture in the video. Enjoy!