After two weeks of utter hell health wise, I was thankfully well enough to take myself away for a long(ish) weekend away to the Lake District, and to treat myself, took “The Beast” instead of “Olivia the Weasel”. (Thanks to Her Majesty, and the resultant extra long Bank Holiday weekend)
I hate traffic, sitting in slow moving, or worse still, stationary traffic is enough to send my blood pressure into orbit, so I do journeys to places like that at stupid o’clock, which meant I got to Ullswater at 01:30 on Sunday morning.
Had a quick sleep in the car, and woke at 04:30 for my first attempt of the trip at a sunrise photography session, to find myself confronted with solid dark clouds.
Damn.. Back to sleep then.
At a more sensible time of about 08:00, I fired up the laptop, and found I had no mobile broadband signal, so drove the little way to Keswick where I filled the beast up with fuel, and, as I was in the area, and saw the signs, decided to take myself up to the Osprey View Point and see what it was all about.
I had a good 90 minutes up there (all the time I could buy with the lack of change in my pocket at the time 🙁 Note, if you go there – take a fair bit of change for the parking, 90 minutes cost £2.70)
The views of the actual osprey’s nest were good, but only if I used the Forestry Commission/Osprey Watch supplied telescopes – even my 300mm lens, with a 2.0x teleconverter on a 1.6x crop sensor making an effective 960mm lens, was useless for a nest at over a mile away.
Never-the-less, I had a good 90 minutes looking and shooting the the birds located at what is known as the “lower viewpoint”, I didn’t go to the higher viewpoint, as I was constrained for time in the car park :(, I will do next time though!
I even managed to get a couple of (not so good) shots of a cute red squirrel.
Once done, I wondered down to the car park again, and took the opportunity to have a lovely jacket potato cheese and beans at the Old Sawmill Tearoom and fired up the laptop, and looked at the weather forecast…
As expected from what I could see overhead, the Lake District was covered in a layer of unbroken cloud…
Double Damn…
Scotland however – east coast, was forecast to have good weather, so, with the newly filled tank – headed along the A66 for the M6 to bonnie Scotland in desperate search for good weather.
After a stop at Gretna Green and some shopping at the outlet village there, I headed up to Moffat and a reservoir that was apparently forecast to have blue skies and sunshine.
A few play shots later with my newly acquired B&W 10 stop filter (LEE Big Stoppers are rocking horse wotsit to find at the moment, and that was my preference as I have a 100mm filter holder for my Cokin Z-series filters) of the reservoirs in the area, I headed towards Peebles, where I found blue skies and sunshine.
I took that opportunity to re-fill the beast, have some food in the sun, and sit down and enjoy the rays, before heading on to drive through the city centres of both Edinburgh and Glasgow as I’d never been.
Now I have seen the centres, I am going to find some time to go back for a shoot of some of the architecture.
That’s a lotta miles covered, and whilst catharsis in nature, still a bit *too many hops*.
After a conversation with a good friend, and awesome pro photographer, Cath Evans, I had the revelation that I really was busting myself for relatively little gain.
I needed to take a step back and actually enjoy what I was doing, and stop trying to chase the weather, and all the associated stress, and frustration in trying to “force” a shot.
I just needed to slow down a little bit.
Too much stress with work, me being ill, and wotnot, my desire to have a good weekend led me to still rushing around like a headless chicken.
So – with that effective “slap about my head” – and a huge thanks to Cath, for the few choice words that were said that made me realise that – I took masses of time to shoot at Ullswater and Aira Force the next day.
I have also learnt where the sun will be at various times of the day, and have now got a re-plan for my next trip to the Lake District, and where I will be, at what times of day.
The best results of both days sessions are here, so there will be loads more shots forthcoming after my next trip.
