The Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire Dawn
Earlier this year I spent a week in the Yorkshire Dales and it turned out pretty challenging!
It's not somewhere I've photographed before but I have been there climbing and so had a vague knowledge of the area. Considerable advance research was still needed, if only to identify a good location to stay! Such research is always hard, no amount of looking at maps, Google Street View etc can surpass actually visiting an area. I normally prioritise the review of maps to assess topography and sun rise/set angles over looking at images and photographs captured by others. This, I hope, puts me on a road to identifying new places and photographs whilst not being unduly influenced by what others have done before.
My research identified a number of places towards the Southern Dales but also some to the North and East thus it made sense to find accommodation somewhere central. This led me to the lovely Stone House hotel just on the North side of Hawes. Unfortunately, the English weather didn't cooperate; the skies were either cloudy or clear. On one afternoon I scouted an angle on the Ribblehead viaduct, got there for for sunrise the next day only to get drenched as very heavy rain showers came rolling down the valley. :-(
One of the things I like to do when the weather is poor is to explore the area, scouting new locations to which I can return when the weather improves. I did lots of that! Maybe, I didn't see the Dales at their best, but I found it a photographically hard area. The lower-level land is farmland and in active use by livestock. Keeping that livestock in-place are high - perhaps 7 foot - dry stone walls topped with barbed wire. For the livestock it must seem like a prison but it also severely constrained photographic opportunities! It was this lower-level land that had the trees and other interesting features but it seemed very difficult to find good vantage points. In total contrast, the higher-level land was rolling moorland covered in pretty pink/purple heather and not much else! OK, slight exaggeration!
So after a week what did I have? Well, the honest answer is not a lot :-( But that's what this landscape game is about :-)
Andy