Lud’s Church Engagement Shoot | Emma & Will

Sun-Filled Peak District

Last year I came up with this great idea to make a wish list of engagement shoot locations. Places I’d love to visit and photograph; Hanley my home town centre was one from last year. Lud’s Church in the Peak District National Park made it onto the list this year. I then needed the right couple well after hearing how much Emma & Will enjoyed visiting Lud’s Church whilst living close in the Staffordshire Moorlands the engagement shoot idea was their’s for the taking.

We met up on a bright blue sky evening in May 2021 at the Gradbach Car Park just alongside the River Dane. This is a free car park and always popular at the weekends. Luckily we’d come on a weekday evening to avoid the crowds. Wandering past the incredible Gradbach Mill and Scout Camp we started our ascent to Lud’s Church. As I do all my shoots 2 hours pre-sunset it always gives the most beautiful shimmering light broken down through trees which I love to play with. The Black Forest just over Black Brook gave me this gorgeous effect and I took a fair few photographs here.

I’d scouted the location a couple of weeks back as it’s always nice to know where I’m going especially when exploring somewhere as remote as Lud’s Church. I knew from that scout that the setting sun over the moorlands would give us nothing within the deep dank chasm so I had to work in the shadows and the recess of the stone wall to create garnering any natural light I could find.

The engagement shoot was going well but nowhere near as well as it did once we took a small diverted path up through the valleys heathland to reach the peak which gave us incredible views back over the Black Forest and Gradbach on one side and on the other an expansive look across the Staffordshire Moorlands and Cheshire showcasing the nearby Roaches, Tittesworth Reservoir, Hanging Rock and The Cloud nearer towards Macclesfield.