The hell of commuting and a Goathland sunset

A while back I downloaded Strava (a GPS cycling app.) onto my phone so that now when I cycle to and from work I'm competing against myself from one or two days ago. Today was going to be my personal record breaking attempt at the Aislabyside route from Ruswarp to Grosmont (a hilly 7 miles) but was completely scuppered by a frightened Cockapoo and sheet ice. 

Damn you Chris Geall of yesterday...you win again!!

View across the Eskdale from Aislabyside

The Esk coming into Grosmont

Just to annoy anyone who has a real commute, I did actually meet two cars and the school bus on the way in but it was rush hour after all.

Last night on the way home I caught a lovely sunset up on the moors and so have decided to paint it. I though I'd take you through the process.

I always take a big chunk of photo's trying to capture as many exposures as possible. When you stand looking out over a scene your eye is continually adjusting where as a camera just takes one exposure. So I take the view that in order to paint a good picture you need to cheat like mad in order to get closer to the way we remember a view.

Here are a few of the photo's

As you can see by taking a photo directly into the sun the sky is nicely exposed but the lower half is almost in silhouette. 

By moving to the right and taking the sun right out of the shot all the lovely cool colours of the distant hills and valley come to life. I'm not putting the road in this picture I'm going to save it for later in the year when the sun sets right above it.

This shot shows how the sun changes the colour of the far hill to a rich orange.

By dipping the camera I've now got a better idea of the foreground, my foreground will be darker than this but I think I'll play with exaggerating the sunlight on it.

There's a kind of zig zag going on with this composition which I will use to lead the eye into the painting.

I'm going to publish this now, paint the picture and see if I come close to my original intention.

Wish me luck.