Andy Gawthrope Photography

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Tag: Lake District

Borrowdale rock photography

Introduction

The long, often blue sky days of summer are a photographically challenging time but this year I wanted to make the most of them by doing something different and pushing my photography into an area not previously explored. My photographs are typically of the classic landscape / grand vista style and include land, sky and if possible, water. I needed a project concentrating on much smaller, simpler subjects that would, hopefully, lend themselves to summer conditions.

Please see the gallery at the bottom of this post for the full collection of photographs. Each may be enlarged by its selection.

After much deliberation two ideas remained. The use of colour, patterns, shapes and textures as a primary subject with images bias towards simplicity and the second idea was to photograph people rock climbing. I like the idea of photographing people in seemingly gravity defying positions high above the ground surrounded by hard unforgiving rock. There is a certain sense of tension and of drama.

At some point I realised that photographing climbers was going to be hard, very hard in fact, despite having over a decade of climbing experience myself but the idea of rock somehow stuck and fused with the first idea. So I had a project, but where to go?

Location

The English Lake District has a long history of rock climbing but also of quarrying for stone. That is no different from many other areas of the UK such as Snowdonia but I hadn’t been to the ‘lakes’ for a few years and felt it was time for another visit. Borrowdale is my favourite Lake District valley. It’s a wide crescent shape with Keswick at the top and Seatoller at the bottom. It’s green and a beautiful mix of small farms, trees and water surrounded by hills and sheep. And, of course, no description of Borrowdale can omit the magnificent Castle Crag which sits in the middle of the valley just below the Southern end of Derwent water. Seen from the North its imposing shape can’t be mistaken. Borrowdale also makes a great location as it has the friendly campsite of Hollows Farm at Grange. This nestles just below the Northern slopes of Castle Crag and thus most locations are within walking distance. It was, therefore, the easy choice as I knew the area had several quarries from previous climbing and photography trips.

Fingers

I must stress that it’s necessary to be very, very careful when photographing in quarries. Rocks can and do fall from above unexpectedly; They don’t have to be large to cause serious injury to body or equipment. They are dislodged by many factors not just humans.

Before visiting, rooting through the Internet and my book collection identified that others had photographed in some of the area’s I was considering before. But the English Lake District is one of the most popular destinations in the UK and it’s almost impossible to photograph something completely original. In particular I was inspired by photographs in Landscape of the imagination by Angie and David Unsworth, ISBN 978-0-9565798-0-5, Greenburn Publishing 2010. Sadly, this excellent collection of work appears to be now out of print.

Equipment

The equipment used for the project was the medium format GFX100s from Fujifilm with either a GF32-64mm, GF45-100mm or GF100-200mm lens and it was usually necessary to work close-up to subjects using longer focal lengths to fill the frame. Focus, sharpness and depth of field were paramount so many of the images were made using wider apertures for later focus-stacking. The Fujinon lenses are very sharp especially at F8 but diffraction does start to soften from somewhere between F11 and F14 and is definitely noticeable by F16. For all photographs the camera was tripod mounted to ensure sharpness but positioning was often complicated as the ground was strewn with boulders and slippery, damp vegetation.

Photography

Silver stripes No. 2

Typically my photographs are made to stand alone being intended for wall display either in a domestic or commercial environment. I felt from the outset that the photographs intended for this project would probably work best as a collection and should therefore share, for the most part, a common aspect ratio. The GFX100s has a native 4:3 aspect ratio but in the field I often found myself using the 1:1 (square) preview so it wasn’t a surprise that on returning that I quickly settled on a 1:1 aspect ratio for all photographs.

I was fortunate that on each visit to the Lakes the weather was dry and bright, perhaps sometimes a little too bright but at least not dull and wet. Overcast but bright days were best, deep shadows were avoided and there remained sufficient, softer light to bring-out the colours. Although clear-sky days or days with direct light gave well saturated colours and shorter exposures there was also a tendency for shadows from surrounding trees and their leaves to be deeper and more noticeable. When these shadows moved between images focus-stacking became problematic and required extra work to ensue specific area’s were selected from one image over that in another. The best tool I’ve found for focus stacking is Helicon Focus because of the manual interventions and editing it supports during the stacking process.

Whilst making the photographs but more so after returning I became aware that there were two clear groupings; The close-up, abstract ones and those including features more identifiable such as the ground or grasses and thus non-abstract. Initially this was a concern as I couldn’t decide whether I liked the unbalance, the contradiction within the same collection. However, ultimately I feel more comfortable with both being together as they contrast and the non-abstract photographs help set the context of the others.

At the risk of upsetting many geologists, I suggest rock is commonly considered as dull and almost uniformly grey! What this project shows is that rock can be many different colours depending on its mineral composition and is certainly not a boring uniform grey! Some of my favourite images from the project are the parallel, vertical silver stripes. Not only are they a bold pattern but they are very simple with lots of detail and the square composition adds that little extra tension. I like the questions that come to mind. Just what are those stripes and where do they go? What am I looking at? I also like those with blocks of orange, pink, black and brown colours. Again I’m drawn to the images and forced to question what I see. These are the abstract images. With other images the subject is clear, such as the tiny green fern growing in a pocket on an otherwise clean, grey rock-wall. It’s so incongruous that I instantly knew it had to be in a photograph. For that and a few others, I felt context was important and chose to include a greater amount of rock.

Conclusion

This project deliberately constrained itself to a few places in Borrowdale so as to be manageable and not open-ended. But I’m of the mind that it could be extended to other area’s and could grow in coming years. Stylistically it’s been very different and a refreshing change.

Many of the photographs in this post will soon be available as individual prints or sets of prints on the Andy Gawthrope Photography website.

I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and seeing the images from the project. Please leave a comment below.

All images are copyright Andy Gawthrope Photography.

The colour of rock

The Fern

Silver stripes No. 2

Quarry

Alien

Bolts

Silver stripes No. 1

Fingers

Moss

Dry and Wet

Three Rhizocarpon geographicum

Rhizocarpon geographicum

Triangle

Ovoid

Orange

1 July 2023
Dubs hut and Hay Stacks

On my recent visit to the Lake District, one of the aims was to do a little mountain photography. Unfortunately the cloudy weather put the stops on that, but the day I arrived the weather looked promising. The plan was to arrive earlier in the day to leave more time for an evening outing, but thanks to hideous roadworks – Birmingham through to Manchester – the journey took much longer than it should have. So when I had arrived there was only about 1.5hrs before sunset. Not enough time for much….

This time of year the sun sets further to the South and behind the mountains in the photograph so, down in the valley, the sun was already perilously close to disappearing behind the mountains. The only other option was to head to the tops – no easy thing with such little time… I was staying at the Bridge Hotel in Buttermere so, the quickest access to the tops was a 20 minute drive to the Honister mine car park followed by a mad dash up the track in the hope of getting somewhere nice by sunset!

So that’s what I did and it almost worked. I got to the Dubs hut just as the sun set with no time to go further. In fact, I would have needed to be there about an 1.5hrs earlier to allow a little exploration and setup time. But that’s how it went 🙁 The result was a very quick hunt for a composition in the fading light. Anyhow, for what was, essentially, a grab shot I’m pretty pleased with the result. 🙂

The photograph is the result of stitching three individual images so, like all my panoramic photographs its pretty wide and computer screens don’t them justice. At full size, the detail in the hut, surrounding stones and distant screes is impressive but this is lost when displayed small-size on computers.

The plan is to do much more mountain photography over the coming year. I’ve asked Santa Claus for a carbon fibre tripod 🙂

Andy

All images are Copyright Andy Gawthrope Photography.

Dubs hut and Hay Stacks

4 November 2018
Autumn colour in Borrowdale

It’s been a long, hot, dry and sunny summer in the UK; the best for many a year. But long days filled with dust and haze make it my least favoured time of year for photography. In fact, the camera stayed in its bag for the whole time! With Autumn approaching and in September I returned to Dartmoor but it was a week of high winds and road-level clouds all thanks to the remnants of US hurricanes making it across the Atlantic. Nothing came from that trip 🙁

A few weeks later and with Autumn in full swing I thought I’d try a trip to the English Lake District, staying at the Bridge Hotel in Buttermere. The Bridge is a lovely traditional family owned hotel with much history; its somewhere I’ve stay before on at least two occasions. In the bar at the back of the hotel are five or so large landscape photographs of the area framed and hung on the walls. They’ve been there for many a year but the colours still look great 🙂 One of these day’s I’ll ask who the photographer(s) were as there is no indication on the frames. Shame. The Bridge is slightly cheaper than many of the Borrowdale hotels and it’s only a short drive over the Honister pass. The Buttermere & Crummock Water area is also much, much quieter than Borrowdale and being a school holiday week it made a stay in the Lakes much more pleasant. My thanks to all the staff at the hotel, especially for receiving a truck wheel after mine was stolen shortly prior to the trip!

Borrowdale Autumn No. 4

I do think that I’ve managed to upset some weather gods tho as again it was predominately a cloudy week, but unlike Dartmoor there were great colours that made up for the dull weather. In fact the first good day of the trip was the day I left! Just my luck 🙁 Several nice images did come from the week tho, nothing I’d call special, just nice. Sufficient reason to return, perhaps next year, with the hope of better light. But I’d also like to see what snow does to the landscape. Trees without leaves, the ground covered in a simplifying duvet of white and distant rocky outcrops could look quite dramatic. Add a little colour too, and wow… 🙂 O’ to be a painter rather than a photographer sometimes! Reality is such a pain!

So, perhaps the title for this post should be ‘Buttermere yet, yet again!’ but as its mostly about Borrowdale that doesn’t seem right. During Christmas 2017, I did much planning for the forthcoming year and one of the projects I settled on was to photograph Borrowdale in the following Autumn. The intention was to get off the beaten tourist tracks and explore something new, new too me anyway and that’s what happened. It was a real pleasure parking at a National Trust car park only to head off in the opposite direction to everyone else, find some small, moss covered stile/gate and cross into new, unexplored territory. It should have come as no surprise to find the occasional photographer crouched behind a tree or bushes but as the area was so large, what photographers were about, didn’t get in each others way. Well I don’t think so. 🙂

Borrowdale Autumn No. 2

Despite it being a school holiday week and towns such as Ambleside, Grasmere and Keswick being rammed with people, away from the tourist hot-spots was really very quiet. Just photographers and dog walkers! O’ and occasional shouts of ‘Climbing’, ‘Off belay’, ‘Safe’ emanating from the crags. One pair of climbers were obviously having a hard time hearing each other, but away from the crag every shout was heard clearly!

So, getting back to Borrowdale. As it happens I recognised a few off the views from the work of others whilst rooting about in the woods, so I certainly cannot claim new and un-photographed territory. Worst luck! I doubt whether there is anywhere new and un-photographed in the Lakes these days. Borrowdale is, of course, synonymous with Castle Crag. It’s the smallest summit in the famous series by Alfred Wainright and he described the wooded area between it and the River Derwent as “the loveliest square mile in Lakeland” and I think I agree! It really is a lovely place. In addition to dominating the Southern end of Derwent Water and Borrowdale, Castle Crag has a wonderful, almost conical shape when viewed from the North. Including Castle Crag in some photographs was something I had specifically wished to do and, as it turned out, it wasn’t at all difficult! It was actually quite hard at times to shoot such that it wasn’t in the frame! As you can see, it made it into this post too 🙂

Borrowdale Autumn No. 1

Common to nearly all the photographs from the week are the grey clouds as can be seen in this post but sometimes there was a little sunlight to lift the colours which made all the difference. To be honest the Autumn colours were probably a little past their best during the week but speaking with a more local photographer Autumn has been really short this year. Just two weeks previously the leaves were still green. Certainly by the end of my week there were noticeably fewer leaves on the trees than at the start of the week and there was always a steady trickle of leaves falling. Most of the red colours had gone but there was still a great variety of yellow, gold, green and, yes, the bracken really was a deep brown!

One characteristic of the area that made it special for me was the space between the trees. It wasn’t dense woodland packed with trees; there was plenty of open ground punctuated by either solitary or small groups of trees, sometimes with rocks or other interesting objects at their base. This made for more interesting compositions and gave the subjects ‘room to breath’.

Whilst I’m no arboriculturist, the trees looked like Silver Birch and in the gloomy conditions their light/silver coloured trunks and branches added a skeletal component helping emphasise their structure and add a little interest. Sometimes tho, when the sun did peek out from the clouds the light/silver colours became very bright reflecting sunlight and making exposure difficult.

Entwined

Most of the photographs from the week set a tree/trees in the context of their landscape, but I was also looking for interesting close-ups too. Almost at the top of the hill and tucked at the back I spotted the two in the photograph. Its not just the curving trunks I like but the detail in the bark 🙂 It was shot at F8 to add a little separation between the main subject and the background, a wider aperture blurred too much of the main subject. When viewed at 100% the Silver Birch trees are wonderfully sharp and its probably my favourite image from the whole week.

Not far from these trees a small patch of red and green moss hung to the side of a rocky step. It was really beautiful and very, very different from the normal big landscapes I photograph – the opposite extreme! Perfect job for a macro lens, but I didn’t have one so I made do with the 50mm but the results were pretty disappointing. But I learn’t a few lessons trying so all was good 🙂

Ah, the 50mm lens… That was a present to myself earlier this year. Its a Sigma Art model and it seems to have become my go to choice. It just seems to magically frame whatever the subject! It’s great for single exposure images but, importantly for me, panoramic’s too. There are two lenses always in my landscape bag now, the 50mm and a 21mm. The 21mm used to be my go to lens but nowadays it only get used when the much wider field of view is needed. Shooting from a little further back and with a little magnification really seems work. A few years ago I’d never have considered 50mm being my default lens for landscape work – at 35mm full frame anyway.

Castle Crag

Well, that was Autumn in the Lakes. It seems fitting to end this post with a photograph that summed up the weather. Clouds covering the high fells, grey cloud but lovely colours. 🙂 Roll on winter and let’s hope its a snowy one 🙂

If you have enjoyed reading this post, found it useful or just simply enjoyed the photographs please share it on social media.

Thanks,

Andy

All images are Copyright Andy Gawthrope Photography.

Borrowdale Autumn No. 1

Borrowdale Autumn No. 2

Entwined

Castle Crag

Borrowdale Autumn No. 3

Borrowdale Autumn No. 4

2 November 2018
Wastwater colour

Back in 2006 I spent a few days in the English Lake District. As I recall now, it wasn’t the most successful of trips as the weather didn’t generally play ball. One rainy day the weather was forecast to break late in the afternoon so, to kill a few hours, I took a drive along the small mountain roads across the Hardknott and Rhinos passes to Wasdale on the Western side of the Lake District. So it was that I found myself on the banks of Wastwater about an hour before sunset.

It’s easy to be complacent, or perhaps I was fully occupied on the photography, but at the time I didn’t realise how special the conditions were. The setting sun was peeking through a gap in the hills, the sky was filled with a mix of small grey clouds, the type so often found as rainy weather clears and there was a lovely warm light illuminating the rocks and hills from the setting sun. One of the images captured that evening continues to be a favourite to this day another included a small tree which, sadly, now seems to have gone.

Those images were captured using my first digital camera, a Canon EOS 5D. Yes, the first model 🙂 Since that time technology has advanced and despite several subsequent trips those special conditions have never repeated. This year I decided I was going to make an effort and see what could be achieved with my current camera, an EOS 5DsR.

Towards the end of April a high pressure weather system was forecast to settle over most of England for a few days with its edge somewhere close to the Lake District so there was a good chance the weather could do something interesting. That was sufficient to throw the gear in the truck and head North.

Wastwater No. 5

As readers will know, I prefer to camp if I can. Mainly because plans can be made, cancelled or changed with speed and ease. There is no booking hotel rooms and cancelling them when the weather doesn’t perform. Camping keeps you connected with the environment, with the weather and its quick and easy to get out should the weather offer a good window of opportunity.

Wastwater, like any other location in the English Lake District has been photographed many, many times. I’m particularly interested in what is called the Screes. Its the side of the hill that runs alongside and drops off steeply into the lake. The Screes have some lovely shapes and colours given good evening light. Most other photographs are from the lakeside; fewer from further back and including more of the lake and the Screes.

On previous trips, I’ve explored the area around the lake quite extensively and so had a good idea from where I wanted to photograph. Scouting locations really does save precious time that is otherwise wasted when the light is at its best. So, top-tip: On those days when the light doesn’t do something interesting, go explore and take a snap just as a reminder of a locations potential 🙂

It was a wet, rainy day when I drove from Bristol but the forecast was for much better weather over the following days. The evening I arrived clouds covered the mountains and the camp site was very wet even waterlogged. Things definitely didn’t look hopeful and I went to bed that night hoping I’d made the right decision coming North. The next morning wasn’t much better but as the day progressed the clouds started to break and by sunset things were looking much, much better. 🙂

Wastwater No. 2

I’ve never really thought about the level of the water in the lake, but compare the photograph above with that at the top of this post… Many of the smaller rocks in the photograph above are covered by water in the in the first photograph making for a simpler image which I like. The 2006 photograph was made during the Autumn so the lake may have contained water from the summer rain. It was only when writing this post that I realised the 2006 photograph and that above where taken from almost identical positions 🙂 Its tempting to suggest this is pure coincidence but the more I think about it, the more I believe there is something special about the composition which is eye-catching 🙂

I stayed at Wastwater for several days and the conditions of that one evening didn’t repeat. I did get other nice photographs but those from that evening are my favourites. Whilst I do like the colours in the above photograph, I also really like black & white landscapes too. They simplify the image removing the distraction of colour. Actually, the more I view the black and white version the more I think I prefer it to its colour counterpart.

Wastwater No. 4

The 2018 photographs were captured using a Sigma 50mm or Zeiss 21mm lens attached to an EOS 5DsR body. The detail captured by a 50M pixel sensor cannot really be appreciated until the images are seen at a good proportion of their full size. So, I urge readers to click on the images and view a larger, but still pretty small, version.

After spending a productive few days at Wastwater, there is still some photographs that I’d like to make but those need to wait until the Autumn when the setting sun again returns to an azimuth angle suitable for what I have in mind. 🙂 Below are a couple of further photographs.

Wastwater No. 6

Wastwater No. 3

Andy

All images are Copyright Andy Gawthrope Photography.

Wastwater No. 1

Wastwater No. 6

Wastwater No. 5

Wastwater No. 4

Wastwater No. 2

Wastwater No. 3

23 May 2018
Buttermere dawn

I had opted to camp in Buttermere behind the Bridge Hotel and awoke to a perfectly still, blue sky morning. A short walk later and arriving at the lake the water was almost a perfect mirror, reflecting a sky in which the only things visible were the contrails of early morning flights. The overnight mist still clung to the lake adding an ethereal quality.

On seeing the tree I knew it had to be central to the photograph but I could also see that a few minutes later the Sun would breach the distant hills and start to stir the air dispersing the mist and disturbing the mirror calm waters. As the distant hills and the side of the tree facing me where in shade I quickly decided that the photograph would be a silhouette knowing the blue sky would back-light the branches and the leaves revealing an interesting level of detail to the photograph.

Andy

21 September 2017