So Mark and I kicked off the 2016 season and our sixth year with the Natural Light Photography Workshops with a trip to Aysgarth Falls, and what a great start it was!!.
We always seem to begin these blogs with a weather report and this time will be no exception. The previous week saw quite a lot of rain and then our friend Carol from BBC Weather promised us a dry weekend, for which she was spot on. Driving up towards West Burton it was in fact looking too good with bright blue skies as far as the eye could see. Meeting with our full group at the Fox and Hounds pub we began with teas and coffees and our introduction to landscape photography talk. Its been a few months since we had done it, but it all seemed to flow back ok.
Heading out, a few clouds began to roll over… Perfect!! Crossing the the fields towards Aysgarth we come to our usual first stop which is a field barn and a view down the valley. This a strange first stop as often we don’t usually take any images here as that time of day means that we are looking directly into the sun, but today with the dark cloud cover and direction of light made for quite a nice image, so we actually got the cameras out.
Back on our usual course we made the short trek over the hill and down towards Aysgarth Falls. We started down at the lower falls which due to the previous rainfall were raging full. This was great practice as we had to find suitable subjects as the whole scene just looked like a big mass of white water, but the smaller details where the river crashed around the rocks made for much more interesting images. Before heading up to the Upper Falls we also had a short stop at the view point to capture a few fast flowing images.
After a spot of lunch, we enjoyed some time around the Upper Falls which looked great after the rain filled week. Making our way back down the other side of the river we crossed back across the fields for an early evening stop at the field barns. This is a great panoramic view with 3 barns curving off into the distance.
To finish off our day we headed back to West Burton and the famous Cauldron Falls. Again there is a raging torrent, plus a fallen tree which was a new feature. The surrounding trees were looking quite bare, so the subjects again were the static rocks and rushing water. This ended a superb day with extra long exposures and reflected sunset colour on the water. Its going to be a great year of workshops!
The finished processed images looked excellent, and a great reward after a superb day in the Dales. If you would like to join us for a workshop to Aysgarth simply Click Here.
