The weather this past few weeks has been very very wet. I know you might think that living in Manchester I’d be used to that, but even us hardy Mancunians get fed up of the rain! However, it’s not all bad news. The rain this past week meant that Withington Golf course was closed and that meant I had a free morning this last Sunday. It’s been a tad busy this past few weeks, both work and personally, so I was glad I’ve have a chance to get out with my new acquisition.
Regular readers will know that my camera gear, is Sony, with the odd 3rd party lens. I was majorly excited when Sony announced that they were releasing the Alpha 7iv, camera and my pre-order went in straight away. It’s been a good year work wise so I decided that upgrading to the A7iv was my Christmas treat to myself. Having spent time doing the setup I was raring to go and Sunday morning was a welcome opportunity to start putting the new camera through its paces.
Edale
I set off with the idea of doing some exploring around the Edale valley. I’ve been up onto Mam Tor lots of times and have wondered what the valley has to offer. So rather than follow the main road round and down through Winnats Pass I turned off and headed left towards Edale. Literally a few hundred yards along the road I pulled over and decided the first shot of the day should be down into the valley from a vantage point on the path up towards Mam Tor.
The road down into the valley winds its way around and down into Edale itself, and you get a sense of this from the image above. Although I suspect that getting slightly higher would have revealed more of the bends in the road. I do quite like the moody sky of this image and the clouds were below the top of the hills opposite. I got back in the car and drove along the road you can see in the image above. I was expecting to find a bigger village than what I came across, but maybe I didn’t take the right turning as I drove along. I ended up at a T junction in the middle of the village of Hope, which is on the main road through to Sheffield. As I drove along the road I thought about where to go next, and all the rain got me thinking about going to Ladybower Reservoir to see if the overflow points where taking water out of the Reservoir. No such luck, so off I went to park up at Fairholmes, and go explore the dams.
Derwent Dam
I’ve been to shoot images of the damn on a few different occasions but I was expecting that there would be a significant amount of water coming over the edge of the overflow from Upper Derwent Dam and then flowing out into Ladybower Reservoir. I wasn’t disappointed.
As you can see from the image above there was a large amount of water flowing over the edge and down into (eventually) Ladybower Reservoir. This is an impressive location and a wonderful feat of engineering but it is a popular spot. As always with this type of location members of the public walk all over the front of your shot without even noticing that you are there. I decided that an alternative composition was required. My focus on previous visits has always been either the middle of the overflow, or the “turret” on the right of the dam as you stand in front of it. I noticed a man and his son clambering up a muddy path off to the left and decided to explore.
As you can see from the image above there is a small “weir” that sits just in front of the overspill and this adds a little bit extra to the scene on this left hand side of the dam. The smoothing of the water, both on the overspill and in the foreground pool, was done using my Lee Filters Little Stopper, which allows the shutter to remain open longer, in this case 30 seconds. The lens was my Sony 16 to 35 G lens and this was taken at 21mm. I really like this image.
Bottoms Reservoir
I packed up my gear and decided that lunch was in order at the visitors centre at Fairholmes where id parked my car. A bacon and sausage sandwich and a coffee later and I was on route to my next location, which would be a visit to one of my 12 significant image locations at Bottoms Reservoir.
Bottoms Reservoir is on the Woodhead pass, just after you drive through the village of Hollingworth. I found this scene by chance as I explored the reservoir and decided that it was good enough to be within my significant images project. I was quite taken with this scene when I found it, the lone tree, the small babbling brook, this is a nice location.
I’m actually stood behind a fence thats topped with barbed wire, but the joys of having a largish tripod, allows me to have one of the legs on the other side of the fence, and you wouldn’t know the fence is anywhere near when looking at the shot. This image is again taken with the Lee Little Stopper ND Filter, on the front of my 16 to 35mm G Lens. I really do like this image and I hope to come back when it’s all iced up in the very near future.
So a great day out testing out my new Sony Alpha 7iv, and more than happy with it and am looking forward to getting out and about much more in the coming weeks and months. One small frustration, however, is that Lightroom hasn’t yet been updated to accept the Raw images, so all the ones seen here today are JPEG, with some minor edits in Lightroom. I’ll keep you posted on the Lightroom update situation as it develops.