A morning walk in the glorious Bank Holiday sunshine with friends in the hills above Denshaw and Castleshaw proved to be both spectacular and sad. The pleasantly warm temperatures, the excellent company of my wife, friends and three dogs in the glorious Saddleworth hills gave me an opportunity to create some spectacular images. However, the images created were at a dreadful environmental cost of losing hundreds of hectares of historic moorland to fire, probably as a result of someones ignorance, negligence and selfishness.

Taken with the Leica M-P240 and the Leica APO-Summicron-M 75mm f/2 ASPH.

As is usually the case on such a walk, I had my favoured Lowepro BP 150 AW Hatchback 22L Camera Bag accompanied by my Leica M-P240, the Leica Super Elmar 21mm, the Leica 35mm Summilux FLE and the Leica APO Summicron 75mm lens. The first picture of my friends walking towards a farmhouse and the smoke filled horizon obviously screamed 75mm APO Cron in lens choice. For the rest of the images and remainder of the walk, everything was taken on the 35mm Lux FLE, such a versatile and amazing lens for this situation.

Taken with the Leica M-P240 and the Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 FLE.

Whilst I do have a preference for converting images to black and white a lot of the time, my first impression is to leave them in colour. I may have a change of heart at some stage in the future but at the moment I think the glorious weather and colour palette of the smoke deserve to be shown.

Taken with the Leica M-P240 and the Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 FLE.

The dichotomy of bearing witness to such a sad event and creating such spectacular images will always be with me whenever I look at them in the future.