26/12/2024
I have lost sight of why I started this page and am looking to get back on track with it. I originally set it up as a diary / record of my trips out with the camera - something I could look back on in years to come when I may not be able to get out as much and maybe for the kids / grandkids to have a read and see what the old man used to get up to at silly o'clock.
This is a photo I already shared but I am going to put more around the experience as photos are just a moment in time and they are actually much more than that to the photographer. It is rare for me that a photograph only brings back the memory of that exact moment. It can bring back years of trips out and standing in the same location over and over waiting and hoping for the conditions to be perfect. The failures are part of the journey and what makes the final result so much sweeter.
We normally have a couple of weeks away in the autumn - these are usually in either Dorset or the Lake District. Both are fantastic locations at any time of year but the autumn colours do favour the Lake District with its mountains and tree lined valleys and lakes.
The first week of our trip was great for getting out and about as there was no rain - something that is very unusual in the Lakes. While there was no rain there was also no light - we had wall to wall clouds everyday and I was just not inspired to take the camera out of its bag.
Luckily that did improve the following week - still no rain but we had some breaks in the cloud.
We normally stop in Keswick - such a beautiful little town and if you haven't visited before I can recommend it. You can park the car up for a week and fill your time just from that one location. It has a huge lake to walk around, mountains and lower fells within walking distance and the town has all the shops and pubs / cafes you will ever need.
On the Monday of the second week we decided to drive over to Ullswater as I wanted to have another go at the steak pie on offer at the pub in Pooley Bridge. It had been a few years since we had visited and I just needed another pie fix.
The plan was to go to Martindale, park the car and walk up a fell before heading back into Pooley Bridge for some lunch. Once we had parked up at the start of the walk I did my usual thing and raced off ahead - leaving Donna still putting her walking poles together. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the road we had come in on dropped down into the valley and between 2 farm houses. The trees had lost a lot of leaves but the autumnal colours just looked fantastic.
We have done this walk at least 5 times before and I had never noticed this beautiful scene within 25 yards of getting out of the car. Always rushing to get up on the fells to try and find the perfect photo. So - take note - sometimes your slow partner can save the day :)
The light on the scene wasn't great and while I knew in the right conditions it would be a superb image I decided to just take a snap with my phone (image included) and store the info away for another year - something to return to when the weather conditions and light looked worthy of the location.
We completed our morning of walking and headed for the Sun Inn in Pooley Bridge for my steak pie (photo included :) )
A few days passed and I was keeping my eye on the weather apps - looking to see if there was a chance of mist. Thursday looked promising and I decided that an early start may be worthwhile and Ullswater looked like a good spot to see cloud inversion from the top of the fell we walked up earlier in the week. The drive to a location is always interesting - the anticipation of great conditions and the fear that a deer will jump out in front of the car at any moment.
I spend a lot of time driving around country lanes in the early hours before sunrise and over the last 10 years have almost killed every type of deer that live in the UK. I even narrowly missed a Chinese water deer that jumped out of a hedge a few years ago in Norfolk. I also had 2 huge red deer stags jump over a farm gate and almost land on the car bonnet a couple of years ago in Dorset. Luckily I have only had near misses so far and all the deer all lived to tell the tale. I did get a horror story from an AA recovery driver of an incident he had attended. The driver had been killed instantly when a huge stag he hit at speed came straight through the windscreen and it was all over for both of them. So - I always give myself plenty of time to arrive at my location and drive slowly. I also drive in the middle of the road when I can - the deer can appear from nowhere and I like to give myself as much time to react as possible. Luckily the roads are normally empty of other cars at that time.
Anyway - the drive over to Ullswater was incident free and as I turned off the A66 and started to head down the lanes into the valley I could see the blanket of mist in the valley. These are the moments that make photography fantastic for me - the realisation that something epic is happening and not many people get to see it. Setting up and taking the actual photos is quite stressful - I am always second guessing the composition or if I am in the right location. So - the therapy of photography is more in the journey than the destination - for me anyway :)
I almost stopped the car several times to take some photos of the valley but the fear of missing out had already started to creep over me - the closer I got to my planned destination. So I pushed on to the parking place near the fell I planned to walk up.
The walk up the fell was a fast one - FOMO again. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath and that at least gave me a chance to see the landscape revealing itself as I climbed out of the mist and up to the summit. The views up at the summit were nice - nothing I hadn't seen before though. I think I have become a bit blind to the beauty of it all when I am constantly striving for perfection - which is a sad statement. I am reminded of this as I normally rush around trying to find a perfect shot while the other people on the summit, campers, walkers etc. just stand and watch the mist flowing around the valley below.
The summit of the fell wasn't the main reason for my trip out - I was just passing time up there while the sun got up high enough to light the valley below and the scene that I had found earlier that week. On my walk back down I could see the lane and valley and it was the only area without mist. While frustrating I knew that the sun would probably lift some mist from the surrounding hills as it made its way into the valley and added some warmth to cold ground.
I arrived back in the valley but was still an hour too early. I decided to walk back along the lane to see if anything caught my eye and met a man who had just arrived and parked his car up. He was planning on walking the fells for the day before heading home to pick his son up from school. He had picked a great day for it :) We stood and talked for 30 minutes. We talked about photography and walking and other things that I cannot remember now as it was well over a month ago. We had never met before and we will probably never meet again but we shared 30 minutes with each other. Photography is so much more than taking and editing pictures and I have many memories of those conversations with strangers.
As we talked I was keeping my eye on the sunlight slowly creeping down the hillside - it was slow going but eventually I knew it was time to get back to the top of the lane.
The rest of the story is the boring technical stuff - I locked in a composition I liked with the camera on the tripod and took numerous photos as the light slowly crept into the scene and the mist washed in and out. In landscape photography there is very rarely one exact moment when you click the shutter and know for sure that is the shot. Normally it is an hour of taking photo after photo and making a decision later once you can view all the photos on a computer. This is the truth about photography for me - the beauty is everything up to the first press of the shutter and then it all falls into business as usual and that feeling of frantic FOMO.
I know it has been a long read and well done if you made it this far :) More to come in the next few weeks hopefully as I am planning on escaping the house and heading up to the Peak District at some point.
