The first day of our Yorkshire Dales trip saw us head to Ribblesdale. This was a late in the day trip as the weather was awful – it had been raining most of the day.
However, when you’re staying in very comfortable accommodation, it’s not difficult to enjoy relaxing and chilling. We were pleased to be back at the same spacious barn that we had stayed in back in 2021.
We decided to get out and get some fresh air, with a plan to drive around to see if we could spot any barn owls.
We headed towards Scaleber Force waterfalls, which is where on the way back last time, we spotted some barn owls. There were none to see this time round.
As we parked the car near to the waterfalls, we could hear shrieking – as I opened the car window, we realised that there were obviously folks down in the water jumping in.
How dare they enjoy themselves and prevent me from doing my photography?
To be honest, I wasn’t that disappointed, as I got two of my best shots from the Dales, from this location on our last visit two years ago.
One of them, which I had titled “Scaleber Swirl” did very well in a club POTY Round scoring 9/10.
With people jumping around in the water, and having done this location before decided things for us, so we moved on and I dialled in the Winskill Stones location into the satnav.
Winskill Stones is a nature reserve north east of Langcliffe where you can find lots of limestone grassland that make really interesting scenes.
When we arrived as per the book (The Photographer’s Guide to the Yorkshire Dales), I could not see the tree as the book had suggested.
I hopped out of the car and had a quick look around. The scene below was grabbed as a quick shot, and I didn’t think this tree was the one.
I walked further down the road opposite the layby but still could not make out the location of the tree.
Kathryn got out of the car and had a wander and she spotted where it was pretty quickly! Her sense of location and logistical skills have always been superb, she has a personal human compass that I am completely bereft of!
I had not fully RTFM’d the book and the tree was further down the road and “…across the fell…”
As we approach the hawthorn tree, it was obvious the limestones were going to make for great leading lines.
I asked Kathryn for some compositional suggestions, then went about taking some shots.
I then had a wander around taking shots from different places.
Looking from the other side of the tree back towards where the car was parked provided a very pleasing view. I think this shot is my favourite from the visit.
I had a last minute thought to jog back to the tree and try a long exposure.
I did a couple of shots between 10-30 seconds but observed some cloud movement. I wanted to try a longer exposure but had forgotten my shutter release cable.
Why oh why Nikon haven’t yet enabled a longer set timer (30 seconds is the max) on their cameras is a really puzzle. This would be an easy enhancement some camera manufacturers have enabled which would eliminate the need for a shutter release cable when wanting to do an exposure longer than 30 seconds.
Anyway, that as it for our very late trip out. We were both pleased we’d made the effort, ignored the weather and got some fresh air and exercise.
Back at base, many of the shots from this location look good in colour and even better in black and white.
Onwards and upwards…