Aira Force

I’ve always enjoyed doing a lot of driving round the Lake District to take in a lot of the beauty and ever changing scenery of this amazing National Park. I’ve driven past the sign on the A592 that says ‘Aira Force car park’ so many times but I’ve never ended up stopping to walk up to explore the Aira river.

I bumped into someone a few weeks ago when I was out walking the dog who I know is also into photography and he suggested to me that we get together sometime with the cameras and explore somewhere. We deliberated over a few locations and he suggested Aira Force as he had never been before which obviously made me think that I hadn’t been either so it was the perfect spot to explore for the first time together.

Our plan was to go out in the evening after work to the waterfalls then head up to Gowbarrow Fell for sunset which is right next to the river. Once we got there we headed uphill next to the river with the sound of the crashing waterfalls in the distance, it wasn’t long before we spotted the main attraction, Aira Force.

We decided to have a little scout around first before going to the main waterfall, we both found a couple of compositions in the river directly above the falls and spent a few minutes exploring these different views.

After probably spending a little too much time exploring these compositions we wandered down the path towards Aira Force and settled into trying a few different angles, we ended up getting engrossed in the falls and managed to get a few different images but didn’t realise how long we were taking.

Time flies when you’re having fun!!

We suddenly noticed the sky above us turning a beautiful pink colour but it would’ve taken us about 20 mins to get to any sort of view point to capture to stunning colours over Ullswater lake. So instead of trying to rush to capture the last of the sunset we decided to stay where we were and make the most of the remaining light.

All in all I had an amazing time trying out different compositions and trying to capture something original, I will definitely have to return there to seek out more images from further up the river and hopefully make it up onto Gowbarrow Fell.

Heres a selection of photos I got from the evening.

Enjoy!

It's not always about the photography

When I manage to get out to do some photography, more often than you’d think I don’t even get my camera out of the bag, let alone get a decent photograph that I’m happy with. A lot of the time it’s just the action of getting out into nature and enjoying the world in the company of Murphy, my ever amazing labrador. Sometimes we don’t even need to go far, just a wander up into the local woods or down to the shoreline to catch the sunset.

We like to get out in all weathers, be it wind, rain, hail, everything the heavens throw at us. Murphy isn’t bothered about getting wet or blown about, as long as she’s outside sniffing around and exploring. Even getting out in the middle of the night to take in the beauty of the night sky and just exploring, trying to find that elusive subject to take a photo of.

Where as a lot of people wouldn’t dream of going out for a walk unless it was a nice sunny day, I really love the adverse weather, the drama of big brooding clouds ready to dump the next bout of rain onto the world, having to walk head on into the gusty wind or getting out when its freezing cold when other people would be sat all cosy at home in front of the fire. The fact that there’s no-one else about is a bonus, it gives me absolute solitude, a time for me to reflect on the weeks events, a chance to clear my head and just relax with nature.

Obviously if there is a photographic opportunity while i’m out and about I relish the chance to capture the moment to enjoy and share with others later down the line. I want to try and capture the mood and emotion of the scene as best I can to portray how I was feeling at that time.

You see, it’s not always about the images, photography is always a good excuse to get out there into the big wide world and go exploring and to enjoy my own company if for just a little while, to forget about the worries in life. It’s my escape.

Not great weather for stargazing!

Over the winter period I have been wanting to use the long dark nights to get out and develop my Astro Photography skills. I’ve always had an attraction to the night sky, the stars and beyond so naturally I’ve been wanting to capture that in my photography.

Unfortunately the weather has scuppered my plans and I’ve only been able to get out twice so far when the skies have been clear enough.

Below are a couple of the finished photographs that I managed to capture when I was out.

This first image is of a full moon at the start of January, where it was a fairly cloudy evening, but fortunately there was a break in the clouds and I was able to get a nice shot of the moon with some moody clouds surrounding it.

The image wasn’t as easy as it looks to take though. There was a large dynamic range in the image with the moon being so bright and the clouds around it very dull. To the human eye you could make out all the detail of the moon and the clouds without any issues, but cameras unfortunately don’t see the same range of contrast that we do.

So what I had to do was to take an image exposing for the brightness of the moon and then a second image exposing for the sky surrounding it. After that I had to blend the two images into one in photoshop, so you have got the best detail from both photos.

This image was taken up at the Pepperpot in Silverdale one cold night. Before going to bed I had a quick look outside to see what the weather was like and on seeing that it was a cloudless starry night, which have been few and far between, I picked up my camera bag and went out into the cold, taking the dog along for some company.

I decided to do a bit of light painting on the Pepperpot in order to show off the foreground interest a little more. I started with an exposure for the sky to get the stars looking their best by using a fairly high ISO and a large aperture to collect as much light as possible on my 20mm f1.8 lens.

After that, I took several images of the same composition, but at a smaller aperture (f8) to get a larger depth of field and refocusing on the foreground. I then used my torch to ‘paint’ in the areas I wanted to highlight. It’s easier to use several different exposures with different angles of the torch lighting different things, so you have more options when you’re back in Photoshop. In this instance, I took six different exposures, but only used four of them and even then I only used part of these images.

Back in Photoshop, I used the sky as the background layer and the foreground images as layers on top, by using layer masks I selectively ‘painted’ in the foreground on top of the background layer to form the final image.

I attempted to make a star trail photo as well while I was out, but unfortunately half way through my lens started to fog up due to the cold conditions so this didn’t work out. Something to try another night!

So fingers crossed for some better weather and stargazing nights to come!

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden

Over the Christmas holidays I went to the National Trust property of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, near the town of Ripon.

I took my camera just in case there was an image or two i could make out of the ruins and the garden. I’d never been there before, so didn’t really know what to expect. Really glad that I took my camera, as it is a beautiful place, even in the winter time where there were barely any leaves on the trees and no flowers in bloom.

These are a few of the images I took while we were walking around the park. The Abbey is so big it really lends itself for photography - there are so many different angles to find, with beautiful light coming through the many windows, doors and archways.

I only took my 20mm and 50mm prime lens with me, as I didn’t want to carry round my full kit bag all day and these lenses are relatively small so I can fit them in my jacket pocket.

I would highly recommend visiting as it’s a stunning location with plenty to see and to photograph. Also, if you’re a National Trust member you get in for free.

For more information visit Wikipedia or the National Trust page via the buttons below.

Linda McCartney Exhibition

So I’ve just spent the day in the wonderful city of Glasgow where I went to see the Linda McCartney photography exhibition at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

I would certainly highly recommend going if you can make it, it is a fantastic collection of all of her photographs curated by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney who’ve done a fantastic job of showing off Linda’s talent as a photographer, from her professional candid portraits of the huge music stars of the 60’s to her loving family life and her obvious love for Scotland.

It was very inspiring to say the least, seeing the exhibition has made me want to get out and take more photos and experiment with my photography as she did.

You can really feel her passion and love for the different techniques of capturing the moments in time of her different subjects.

Its only on till the 12th January 2020 so get yourself there and experience of piece of photographic history.

A New Beginning…

I decided recently to look at my photography a little more seriously and amongst other things, update my website.

My old site was great and did everything I needed it to do but I found it hard to edit on there and couldn’t get it to look as good as I wanted it to. I decided to swap my website developer to Squarespace as I’d heard a lot about them and loved the look of the templates it provides, and so far the ease of use is amazing. (No endorsement needed!)

It’s obviously still in the initial stages of setting up the new site but hopefully over the coming Christmas period I’ll get some time to put it together properly and get a lot more content on here. I’m also hoping to get out with the camera as much as I can to add to my portfolio of work.

I’ll be posting more blogs as I’m going as well to take you with me through my photography journey.

Stay tuned for more…