Well, after a 9 week wait for my camera and lens to be replaced after me and them went for a swim in the River Brathay, I am now re-acquainted with my new gear, I can now start to re-engage with my photography, although I have to admit that the summer weeks and months has been hard to motivate myself to get out in the Lake District to seek new locations to photograph, but as the camera and lens have now finally arrived, hey presto I have the incentive to set the alarm and get out in to the landscape.
The next decision was, where to go?, and of course it had to be to where I ruined my previous camera and lens, the River Brathay in the Langdale valley.
The weather forecast was reasonable, cloud, some light rain, but low winds, this set me hoping for mist filled valleys and low cloud on the hills.
I arrived 30 minutes before sunrise, got changed, and set off to my chosen location, being surprised to be the only photographer there.
The water was flat calm with excellent reflections in the waters surface, the low cloud adding atmosphere to the vista in front of me, I found a interesting composition using some lilies that were near to the river bank, after many test shots, I plumbed for a portrait shot of the lilies in the foreground with a copse of trees in the background, and waited and waited for some colour to arrive in the sky, after 40 minutes I abandoned the waiting game, and decided to move to Elterwater to see if there was anything worth shooting there. As I arrived on the shores of Elterwater, the light was beginning to hit the tops of the Langdale Pikes, so i tried to compose a shot using the 24 - 70 lens, however this included to much distraction, so I tried the 70 - 200 lens, this allowed me to isolated aspects of the view in front of me, and allowed me to get a good shot of the view in front of me using the reflections of the Langdale Pikes in the waters surface as foreground interest, the bank of trees on the far shore of the lake as mid-ground interest with the Langdale Pikes filing the background, the early morning warm light adding greatly to the image.
I was at this location for about 2 hours although I was delayed throughout this time due to having to take shelter from the regular heavy showers.
As I packed up on the shore of the River Brathay, I decided to drive over to Blea Tarn hoping to get some calm conditions which would aid me in getting some decent photos.
I arrived at Blea Tarn to be greeted by a monsoon shower, backed up with strong winds, so I decided to wait for this to pass before venturing out.
Once I got to the waters edge, the winds were creating quit large waves on the lakes surface, so I began looking for alternative photos, I noticed that the soft warm light shining on Side Pike and the Langdale Pikes was producing the first autumnal colours of the year, so I set out to capture a panoramic of the scene but excluding most of the Tarn in from of me as this was not adding any interest to the shot.
Again the showers were tearing in to me so I took shelter behind the umbrella and waited patiently, as one of these showers was ending I noticed the beginning of a rainbow on the left side of the Tarn, I watched as this got brighter and brighter, so i frantically discarded the umbrella and grabbed a couple of shots of the rainbow. One of these I am very pleased with after post-processing, a unique and original image from a location form where thousands of photos will have been taken.
I then planned to take a walk down Bleamoss Beck hoping to find any small falls which I could shoot, but upon leaving Blea Tarn I came across some clusters of heather which still had some remains of purple flowering on them, I quickly tried to find a composition using one of these clusters as foreground interest, the final image, whilst not being a world-beater, was a reasonable photo of the scene. From here I set off walking down Bleamoss Beck, after some time I came across a interesting little fall, this had some green foulage in the foreground, was light form the side by the sun and had a large rock at the bottom with the water cascading over it. I took several shots of this looking to get the ideal shutter speed that showed this water off to its best, not to still and not to milky, the one I choose was at a shutter speed of 1/13th of a second at f11.
This image was the last of the morning, in total over 5 hours spent on location, I did not fall in the water and I secured some reasonable photos, as I re-traced my route back to the car I came across Chris Sale who was holding one of his 1-2-1 workshops, I have met Chris on a couple of occasions and he has helped me create my Facebook page.
