Littondale… then the weather changed!

I don’t have a crystal ball so you never quite know what the weather is going to be like in 6-months when you are scheduling workshops in the Dales.

This was to be a day in the beautiful littondale, a steep-sided Valley that branches off upper Wharfedale. The sides of the Valley are very steep and there are two roads which lead up these Hills giving us some pretty spectacular views and amazing Dales photographs.

My favourite of these is at the end of the Valley where you get to Halton Gill and and see the views all the way down the Valley, it’s spectacular.

A slight deviation…. #1

It was at this point we realised that the weather was not on our side, in fact, the clouds came in and we couldn’t see very much at all! So rather than staying in the valley, we decided to head to the nearest beautiful waterfall we could think of, because you don’t really need great light to shoot waterfalls.

On the way we managed to get a few photos of pen-y-ghent, as we passed by on the opposite side to the traditional view, then we drop down into settle and up the hill to scalebar force.

A waterfall that we had all photographed before but it’s one of the prettiest so always worth calling in at. It never fails to amaze and for the first time I did a 5-minute exposure using one of my my darkest neutral-density filters – you can see the results below, it’s pretty smooth.

A slight deviation…. #2

By this stage the weather was a little grey and we decided to head in a completely new direction to a place called Linton, based on some photos of a lovely path with walls on either side that she’s always wanted to photograph. This is ideal because again it didn’t realise on great light or Skies.

Not only does this little village have a great path but also a Weir and some natural cascades through limestone, and we managed to salvage some great sunset photographs right at the end because the sky went pink on the other side of the river!

So all in all, this was a completely off-piste workshop – the original plan was scuppered by terrible light and a cold wind, so a quick dig around the memory banks you found a couple of locations which made the workshop into something truly memorable.