I’ve been coming to Ladybower Reservoir for quite a a few years now and I haven’t seen the plugholes actually with water flowing though them, or rather down them. They are designed to take water from the reservoir don into the river Derwent, and stops the dams overflowing when it rains. Let’s be clear this is the north of England and it does rain.
The opportunity arose to get out on Friday and given its been very wet this last few weeks I thought I’d have a drive over and see if the plugholes actually had any water in them. I wasn’t disappointed. The reservoir was really high and there was a major flow of water through both plugholes. I settled in for a day of photography, particularly long exposures.
This is a long exposure of the plughole that is at the part of the reservoir nearest the road. As you walk off the road you turn right along the path and there is a small viewing area. I setup my tripod in the viewing area. This image was taken at 16mm with my 16 to 35 f4 ZA OSS lens, at f4. The shutter speed was set at 25 seconds. Although I did take quite a number of other shots of this scene at different shutter speeds and apertures this is my favourite of the group of images I took at this location.
Having taken a selection of images from that location I moved onto the plughole at the other side of the reservoir and again found myself looking down on the plughole from the viewing area. The video above was taken on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and shows you the power of the water flowing down through the plughole.
It was quite a popular spot and I was soon joined by a good number of walkers as well as what looked like a keen photographer who had a similar idea to me about capturing the plugholes overflowing with some nice light. You can see from the image above a section of Bamford Edge, which this time was bathed in some nice light. The above image was taken at 17mm at f6.3, with a 30 second shutter, this along with a 10 stop Lee ND filter gives the silky smooth effect of the water, both flowing down the plughole and on the reservoir itself.
The image above shows where the water that goes down the plugholes ends up, before it flows into the River Derwent. There is a series of tunnels and waterways beneath the landscape that funnel the water out through the infrastructure seen above and out into the River Derwent.
After packing away my tripod and filters I decided to have a walk around and see what else I could find. It really was a lovely day for early November and my eye was drawn to the light on the hillside below Bamford Edge, this only added to the beautiful colours already on the hillside. I have invested in a 40mm f2.5 G lens and this was on my Sony A7iv (the camera took all the images of the day) as I walked around. It’s a lightweight lens and makes the camera very compact in the hand and is very easy to use when walking. Although I did have all the rest of my gear in my backpack.
As I headed back towards Hetherdene Car park the image below caught my eye.
This image shows the inspection tower and plughole that are situated at the section of the reservoir nearest to the road. I’m stood on the dam wall and this scene caught my eye. There are no filters on this image but you get a sense of the scale and force at play when the plugholes have water flowing through them.
A fabulous location.
I found these images to be really interesting, I’ve never seen something like this here in Sweden. Here they just open the “doors” and let the water out.
Thanks Jan Erik, I’ve been waiting a while to capture them in full flow, so to speak. British engineering at its finest I guess.