#birks bridge

[cumbriacrack]

Coniston men admit illegal fishing Two young men from Coniston have been convicted at Barrow-in-Furness Magistrates Court for fishing illegally following an Environment Agency prosecution Full story: https://www.cumbriacrack.com/2018/06/08/coniston-men-admit-illegal-fishing/

[wilsonphotographics]

Birks Bridge, Duddon Valley

Birks Bridge

We came across Birks Bridge, and the gorge it spans, purely by chance as we drove through the Duddon Valley en-route to shoot at another location. It was raining and we’d been up early so we pulled over in the small “layby” next to the bridge to crack open the flask of coffee.

It had been raining all night and we could see the River Duddon was in full spate so, after coffee, we…

View On WordPress

[lakedistrictcalendar]

Birks Bridge - Original Photograph - Duddon Valley

After taking around 100 images of this scene, we've decided to include this one in our Lake District Calendar 2014. Although Birks Bridge is well worth a visit, and quite a dramatic little gorge, I found it much harder to take an effective landscape format image than a portrait orientated one. We're constrained by the format of this year's calendar in which all the images (certainly the paintings) are in a 2:1 ratio wide format. A future calendar in a different format will give me the chance to include scenes that I found worked better when tall, such as this earlier image of Birks Bridge which is probably my favourite of all those taken since I began this project. Of course the grass is always greener, so I assume that if I was instead restricted to a portrait oriented format, I'd be overwhelmed with wide format images, but after doing a little ad hoc research I did in fact get the sense that portrait scenes were indeed a popular format for landscapes. Perhaps its the fact that the near and the far are more easily contrasted when compressed into a tall image. 

[lakedistrictcalendar]

Birks Bridge Duddon Valley - Painting - Work in Progress

After a brief gap in blog updates, Diana and I are back in action. I’m back from holiday, and now acutely aware how little time there is left for us to finish the collection of 12 images, create our calendar and organise the Lake District Calendar 2014 exhibition in November. Actually there has been progress on the exhibition. The date has been set for November 23rd and 24th in Ulverston, co-coinciding with the ever popular annual Ulverston Dickension Festival. More details soon on time and place.

Diana has also been back at the easel, and has been working on the Birks Bridge photograph. As per our previous postings, we’re including some work in progress images, so you can follow the technique used. I’m still trying to persuade Diana to part with a few written words to accompany the w.i.p. images, but they flow far more easily from mouth to ear than they do from hand to keyboard, if you’ll excuse the metaphor.

[lakedistrictcalendar]

Birks Bridge & Duddon Valley - Short listed photographs

Here are a few piccies that haven't quite made the grade for our 2014 Lake District Calendar, although something similar might yet make the final selection. This particular evening we were treated to that classic sunset that can turn the whole of the Duddon Valley to gold. Inspired by the portrait oriented birks bridge shot I posted a few days ago, and still enjoying the novelty of my 4 stop neutral density filter (which I carry around in my anorack) I tried a few more in a similar vein. They didn't quite hit the mark I felt. The water flow at birks is very photogenic, and looks like it lends itself to an easy and compelling composition, but its hard to take a shot that doesn't look cluttered. Sometimes I wish I could just chainsaw down some of those rogue trees that break up the skyline, but it wouldn't really be in the spirit of capturing the natural beauty of the landscape. I'm sure there are a few photographers that have taken a pair of secateurs to the occasional tree branch though. I am actually quite fond of the final image of the textured reeds and small stream, its just that I have a better one that I think should make the calendar.

[lakedistrictcalendar]

Birks Bridge, Duddon Valley - Original Photograph - Future Calendar Candidate

The weather has been so lovely in the Lake District recently that ironically I've had the calendar photography on the back burner a bit. The next photographs I have in mind involve moodier weather, and that included something I was planning for Birks Bridge, which is "next door" in the Duddon Valley. So when the cloud rolled in a couple of days ago I dashed over to try and realise it. In the end the photograph I wanted, which had a more widescreen format, wasn't possible, as there was so little flow in the river that the composition I had in mind didn't work out. What did work out was this portrait oriented image, looking down into the gorge itself. I'd hoped for something dramatic, and it was even better than I'd hoped. In fact the only image which would have been more dramatic would have been the one someone might have taken of me precariously perched on a rock jutting out over the gorge. To get the shot, I had to dismantle the tripod, and mount the inner tube at 90 degrees so it stuck out further over the gorge. I couldn't get the tube arm gripped tightly, so it was at risk of sliding out. I had a heavy camera, and a new heavy and expensive lens mounted with filter adaptor and a stack of filters (to allow for slow blurred water) dangling off this thing. It wasn't stable by itself, and would have fallen in the gorge if I hadn't been holding it down. There was so much springyness in the whole rig that the mere action of taking the shot caused the camera to vibrate as the SLR's mirror flicked up, so I had to take it in 2 clicks of the remote shutter release. The first locked up the mirror then a second later I fired the shutter. What a relief when I got home and found it had all been worth it. I'm delighted with this picture.

Having said that, its the wrong format for our Lake District Calendar 2014, but its a candidate for a future Lake District Calendar. I'll go back in a few days, when normal Lake District weather resumes and the usual million gallons of water a second starts flowing through the gorge and under (and sometimes through and over) Birks Bridge.