For a few years, I've been slightly obsessed with Padley Gorge in the Derbyshire Peak District. It's quite a photogenic place with a brook running through the valley with weather worn secille oak trees either side.
The trees in Padley Gorge have a particular character, I think possibly due to the micro-climate and the landscape in the Gorge. I know the trees as "secille oak" but searching for this particular variety of oak doesn't reveal much about them. What I do know is that the trees I see are twisted in all sorts of weird contortions and make for great photogenic trees.
This morning, before dawn at 715am, I arrived at Padley with the aim of looking for new compositions and possibly shooting old favourites. I keep revisiting in different conditions, light and colours. Padley is especially good looking in fog; this morning looked promising but any hints of mist soon disappeared.
Enough waffle, here's the images I got:
Padley and my favourite tree
Not far from the road is this precariously leaning tree. I've shot it a few times and I can't remember ever seeing a tree as photogenic as this one. It's not easy to shoot with rocks to trip on one side and a cliff edge on the other to fall down!
Same tree, another angle
Like I say it's not easy to shoot a new point of view and this is probably the classic one.
Same tree, again...
Whilst there were autumn leaves on the ground, I believe Padley hasn't reached peak fall yet. Maybe another two weeks and it'll be a riot of colour.
The Gorge
Every time I visit Padley, this particular scene catches my eye. Whilst I've shot it before a few times, I can't walk past without shooting it again!
Twisted and Gnarly
To get this shot involves climbing amongst slippy rocks covered in lichen with pit falls offering to break my ankles, both at once. Every time I've shot this scene, I come away with something slightly different. It seems to be best shot in flat light with no strong sunlight or possibly even better on a foggy day.
Experimental
As I was generally walking in the direction of my car at the end of the session this morning, I spotted this composition where a tree with a v shape looked like it would be good as foreground framing for the trees behind.
For this one I focus stacked frames to get everything in focus. This was a total of 13 images focussed at different points throughout the scene.
Breaking the rules
I don't know whether it's a written rule or not but I was always told with landscape photography not to have too many distractions or clutter drawing the viewer's to the wrong part of the frame. I think I may have shattered that rule here but this tree caught my eye.
Here's one I prepared earlier...
I'll be looking forward to getting back to Padley again especially when the autumn colours become richer. Here's one I shot last year with a double whammy of fog and colour!
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in landscape, urbex and artistic model photography. I like to collaborate with other photographers and occasionally shoot outside my comfort zone.
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