Eskdale

This was another great location on the recent Lakeland trip, tucked away well off the beaten track in Eskdale, the walk up to it with Brad Eide - www.flickr.com/photos/58071954@N08, and Mike - www.flickr.com/photos/muddybootsuk was great with some excellent scenic spots through the small wooded gorge that leads you to the end here at this waterfall.

I't a bit of a scramble down to this spot, made even more difficult with a big bag but worth it I think, although there didn't seem to be lots of spray I was so glad I actually got an image from here as when I'd got home despite constantly cleaning my lens / filters there were lots of images ruined by water spots, and of course they are always in the worst places possible...

This the end of the track up the gorge but there is a feint track up the left hand side of the falls as well (along with a sign that says no path) although we didn't venture up it it looks like people have and it's intruiging me now as to what the view is like looking back down the gorge from there, maybe next time....

A vlog by Mike of our trip can be found here- really worth a watch -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbghJ2rFhD8&feature=em-upload...

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My website: Deep Mono Photography

This shot was composed so that our car, parked in the lay-by, was completely hidden by that large rock so that I didn't have to do any cloning in PhotoShop :o)

A beautiful little secluded rocky waterfall within dense woodland, found this hidden away little place on a walk and decided to set up and have a go at composing a shot, it looked pretty straight forward from the side, in reality it was anything but...

Getting into the water is always tricky but the water levels seemed to vary widly from one inch to the next coupled with the fact there was fallen branches everywhere I had to be really careful.. no sooner had I got into positon and set up I went to begin to set the camera up but in my haste I hadn't secured it with the lock on the tripod ... and off it came! freefalling towards the water.. anyone watching would have got a real treat as after some horrendously slapstick but lucky 'camera juggling' coupled with some fairly loud swearing saw me catch it after about 3 failed attempts about 1 inch above the water..... one of those heart stopping moments closely followed by extreme relief... followed by thinking you idiot...

It wouldn't be me if I didn't have some sort of mishap when I'm out and thankfully this time I lucked out and it didn't end up with a smashed up, wet, ruined camera and lens.

This was taken a while afterwards when the heartbeat had got back down under 200bpm :-)

14mm | ISO 100 | f/11 | 2 seconds

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This was a new location for me for shooting and one I have to say I really liked, so much potential here from both sides of the bridge, myself, Brad Eide - www.flickr.com/photos/58071954@N08/ , and Mike Muddy Boots - www.flickr.com/photos/muddybootsuk had spent some time this day up at Stanley Ghyll falls which had been great (images to come) and we had decidced to walk back via here to check it out....

When we got here we all kind of had a look around for potential spots to shoot from as there was a large group of what can only be described as lunatics on the bridge jumping into the water with wetsuits on... as you do!! while they were busy getting wet it gave us time to slow down and pick our spots, and I decided on this one across the river, it looked ideal, but it didn't look ideal for getting to with a fence to climb and a big slippy looking bank to scamble down which ended abrubtly with a nice big drop into the water... amazingly (for me) this was dealt with without incident and resulted in this shot, Brad (wisely) I think thought he had better not go back to his wife with his arms and legs in plaster and decided to shoot from the opposite side with good results also.

This will definitelty be a great spot in Autumn and one I'll be coming back to to have a go at from Brads side, not long after this was taken it started to pour down so moving around for more images wasn't happening on this day.

Of note on top of the bridge on one of the parapets we noticed 2 markers carved into the stone where the river had flooded right over the top of the bridge!! one in 1890, and another one in 1962, that's some serious water level, we decided to press on just incase it happened again.

A vlog by Mike of our trip can be found here- really worth a watch -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbghJ2rFhD8&feature=em-upload...

Visit my Website

My website: Deep Mono Photography

I found a few 'stragglers' from various parts of the Lake District that I'll upload over the next few days.

For all the walkers who make it to the summit of Scafell Pike (England's highest mountain) every year most will spend there time milling around the...

Reuploaded after yesterdays FlickR meltdown...

Following on from yesterdays shot from Hardknott Roman Fort....., yes, it's Hardknott Roman Fort again!, this time looking out with an overall view of the Fort ruins looking in the opposite direction with Birker Fell on the left, down through the Eskdale Valley and out to the coast at Ravenglass.

Myself, and the two others I was shooting with had a cracking time up here with the weather playing ball in as much as it didn't pour down on us somehow and gave us great dark, brooding moody skies to work with, - you can check out both of their websites here: Mike Muddyboots - www.flickr.com/photos/muddybootsuk , Brad Eide www.flickr.com/photos/58071954@N08/

There's some really interesting stuff all round the Roman Fort including one small building that used to be the bath house and sauna! Given that this is a really exposed exposed area of the lakes that gets totally battered with high winds, heavy rain, and depp snow in Winter it struck me as being a curious place to have taken a bath and sauna! It went on to say how the sauna loosened up all the dirt on the skin so that it could then be easilyscraped off with a knife.... nice !! I don't suppose you would have the need of a cooling pool afterwards though, you'd just walk outside.... not for me!

Mike has also done a video vlog of our trip which he's posted up here - youtu.be/x8e8wu_TGIM - feel free to have a look and give him a follow, he's done a good job and he has the patience to do this kind of stuff, I don't, plus it would be more items for me to lose or break when outdoors, and I'm bad enough as it is :-)

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Another image from the recent Lakeland trip with Mike Muddyboots - <a href="https://www.flickr.com , and Brad Eide over on holiday from America: www.flickr.com/photos/58071954@N08/ and Mike Muddyboots: www.flickr.com/photos/muddybootsuk This was a proper full on day of shooting from start to finish, luckily the heavitly overcast weather was ideal as this allowed us to shoot right through the day, even going for long exposures with no issues with the sun.

This is Hardknott Roman Fort, or rather the ruins of it, built under Hadrian's rule in the 2nd century, tucked away in an unforgiving and remote area of the Lake Distric,t it's really hard to imagine anyone living here let alone the legions of Roman soldiers who would have been stationed here..

We spent quite a while exploring the place and we all spent time shooting it from different angles, it really is a cracking spot with loads of photographic opportunities all over the place, we were really lucky with some of the light breaks too during the overcast weather, the key here was to just spend a good amount of time watching the weather and trying to guess what it was going to do before it did it so you could be ready to shoot, I reckon I got about 4 maybe 5 images from here that I'm really pleased with, which from one location on one visit is a great haul, this being the first one.

Definitely a place to return to with a few more ideas for shooting locations higher up the valley.

A vlog by Mike of our trip can be found here- really worth a watch - www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbghJ2rFhD8&feature=em-upload...

Visit my Website