I originally planned to get out with the camera on Saturday morning as the forecast was reasonable, but when I awoke and looked outside the conditions were rather wet and windy, after checking the online forecast for my intended location which was much the same, I decided to scrap the plans and return to bed.
I had decided to travel to Rydal Water and Grasmere as my intended location as I wanted to catch the autumnal colours of the wooded areas around the lakes and hoped for some early warm light and with little wind hoped to capture some interesting reflections in the waters surface, I also wanted to visit Rydal Falls and the Grot as I have never been there before.
Later in the day I researched the conditions for Sunday morning, these were not to bad, light cloud, little wind with the sun breaking through about a hour after sunrise.
Plan B was swiftly made, alarm set for 5.15 am, bag checked, wet and warm clothing selected ready for the early start.
As I drove over the top of Dunmail Raise what a sight met me, copious amounts of mist in the lower valley below me, this put a smile on my face as I became eager to get parked and find some compositions.
However, I was soon brought back down to earth, as I reached the shores of Grasmere, not an inkling of mist was to be had around the lake, and as I drove round towards Rydal Water, the same conditions where here.
Not to worry the light clouds were breaking and the sky was beginning to lighten in the east for what I hoped would be a profitable mornings photography.
I quickly got changed put on the wellies and set off towards the lone tree and to take a look around the shores to see if I could find any interesting photo locations.
After about 30 minutes looking around I set up at the lone tree and grabbed a couple of photos of tree.
The water levels were high due to the high rainfall that had fallen during the proceeding 24 hours, I noticed this had made a little island a couple of feet from the shoreline which could make a interesting leading line towards the tree, so I decided to wade through the water to get to this, as I stepped gingerly, one foot at a time, checking the waters depth against my wellies as I went, then suddenly whoosh, my foot did not find terra firma below the water. Suddenly, the water was well over the top of my wellies, panicking, I tried to pull my foot up, but this transferred the weight on to my other leg and whoosh, wellie blow the water again. I took stock of the situation I was in, both legs with wellies full of water, camera in hand on the extended tripod which I was carrying. I used the tripod as leverage to get one leg free, then the other and re-traced my steps back to dry land, conscious that the camera went no where near the water at all times.
Feeling like a bloody idiot, I removed my wellies and socks, rung these out and emptied the water from the wellies. What to do now? The photography conditions were improving minute by minute, so I decided to refit the socks and wellies and carry on regardless.
I set up for a shot across the small bay which had the beginning's of pinks and blues developing in the sky, I took two meter readings of the scene and realised that the exposure for the foreground and sky would need balancing using a ND grad filter, I opened my bag only to find that my filter holdall was not there, SHIT !! where were these, and where had I last had these, think!! I soon realised that I had used them last weekend at Derwent Water, surly I had not left them there. OMG the cost of replacing these would be substantial. Racking my brain trying to think where the hell these could be was driving me mad, but what could I do, I was here to take landscape photos and the conditions were improving by the minute, was I going to miss this opportunity because I was worrying about loosing the filters !!.
I decided to continue the photography with two wet feet and no filters available, of course I could substitute the missing filters by bracketing my shots if required.
I took a couple of photos around the lake shore, but was caught by the speed of the changing conditions, within 20 minutes the pastel colours in the sky had gone, with the light becoming quite harsh very quickly.
At this point I decided to pack up and head for Rydal Hall to find the falls and the Grot before this became too busy.
I entered the grounds of Rydal Hall and followed the path to where I thought he falls were, only to find that I was above them and needed to walk through the gardens to pick up the bridge from where I could photograph the falls.
The falls were flowing very fast due to the substantial rain fall of the previous 24 hours, this presented a problem in me achieving a shutter speed to achieve some movement in the water but not making it look too milky with little definition in the water. After taking a couple of test shots I had to bump up my ISO to 1600 to get a shot that I liked, this was the balancing act between high ISO and low shutter speed, the result of my endeavours can be seen below, what are your thoughts?
I then followed the path to the Grot, a quaint little building in very good condition in which you can view the falls through the window. After a few test shots I settled for a shot from just off centre vertically to the window as I could not centralise the shot without the horizontal window frame blocking off the top of the falls.
As I was packing up a couple of visitors turned up, who I had a lovely conversation with about the lake district and which season we preferred and why.
As I re-traced my route back to the car, I noticed a sun-beam shining directly on to one of the little tree lined islands in Rydal Water, I quickly set up and captured the view in front of me, the light on the tree lined island contrasting sharply with the blackness of the far shore. I hope that I captured the atmosphere of the scene, you can be the judge of this as the image is include below.
Remember I discussed at length earlier on in this blog about the stress and aggravation that loosing my filters had caused me, well, upon returning to the car have a guess what I found lying in the water below the door of the car, yes you guessed it my bloody filter pouch. I had been so, so lucky that these were still there. The relief was enormous, note to oneself, make sure that the gear is packed safely and securely in the bag in future. This only left me to kick off the wet wellies, ring out my socks and put on my dry trainers before enjoying a lovely hot cup of coffee.
Ahhh the joys of landscape photography!!
