This mornings travels lead me to the Castlerigg Stone Circle for what was forecast to be a good sunrise. I got there about 30 minutes before sunrise, and was surprised to see that I was the first photographer there. A quickly had a look around, and trying to guess where the best place would be to set up the camera. I decided to go for a composition looking down St Johns in the Vale valley, rather than the composition looking towards Blencathra.
As I was setting up, several other photographers quickly arrived, the final count being five of us.
As the sun began to cast its glow on the underside of the clouds, all indications were that this was going to be something special, and boy did it deliver, the shades of yellow, orange and violets was amazing, I just clicked away for about 30 minutes to make sure that I captured the breath taking colours in front of us.
As is the norm at this time of year, the light show does not last too long. I was looking around at the sky behind me to try and judge if it would be worth a short dash to Ashness Jetty.
As the light was starting to become more harsh in front of us, but with pastel shades still visible in the sky behind me, I decided to swiftly pack up and head for Ashness Jetty.
Upon arriving at Ashness Jetty, there were two photographers at the location, one was set up looking down the Jetty across Derwent Water, I swiftly decided to go for a side on shot looking towards Keswick and try to capture the remaining pastel colours in the sky, a quick test shot showed that the colours were not that prominent. Still as I was there, I decided to try for a long exposure to flatten out the choppy water, and to add some movement in to the sky, I got one decent image from here, not the best but one that I am pleased with.
Whilst I was at Ashness, I decided to drive up to Watendlath to see if there was any images to be captured up there, after a walk about trying to find a image with the little foot bridge as the main point of interest, I gave in as the light was very harsh and the only image that I liked would have had two cars in the mid ground. I went for a short walk along the river looking for a composition, but nothing got my attention.
Finally up on crossing the bridge back towards the car park, I liked the view off the bridge looking back towards the tarn, using the river as the leading line, however when I viewed this shot on my computer, I was not too impressed with it so never processed it.
The result of my mornings work, two decent images, and a superb sunrise.
