The weekends are our greatest asset for time, we simply cannot waste them. In fact, over half the locations we have left to do MUST be completed at the weekend because of either travel time or because they feature waterfalls and brooks (these get shot in normal daylight). We checked the weather, it had forecast a day of showers with breaks of good weather. Neither of us were up for it, we were tired and didn't want to spend the day walking around in the rain. We crossed our fingers and set off to Derwent Edge East - just next to Ladybower Reservoir.
We arrived at the car park, £2.50 for 2 hours... ouch! I paid for the ticket and walked back to the car, on the path I found £2, no one else was around so that more or less paid for the parking, result! We checked the book and followed the directions up to the reservoir dam. The water levels were only just over 50% which was much lower than we expected, I took this shot, more of a documentary shot than a landscape photo:
Literally 5 seconds after I took this shot the rain started to throw it down. We tried to shelter under the trees and wait it out but it wasn't working. The rain was coming in hard and coming in sideways. We both had our waterproof coats on but our legs were absolutely soaking wet. I wasn't happy with the above shot, we tried to look for other compositions in the woodland. It was difficult enough already but the rain really made it more so. The camera and lenses we were using are weather sealed, but it felt like we were forever cleaning raindrops off the front of the glass. We took 3 shots of the woodland area during the torrential rain, I actually quite like them which is why I am posting all 3. I especially like the third one with the narrow path leading through the centre of the shot. I had to shoot this one as quickly as possible because I was pointing the camera up towards the sky, the lens was covered in rain within a couple of seconds
We started to walk back to the car. I wish I had taken a selfie of us so you could see how wet we were, it wasn't pleasant! As we got to the car there was a break in the rain, we decided to hang around for a little bit longer and explore a little more of the area. I'm glad that we did that because Tracy found this composition, she framed the shot with the trees at both sides of the image with all the converging lines and the 'S' shape of the water. I didn't even see the composition, she is absolutely killing this photography lark, even though she won't admit it! I actually think this will be the final image for this location, it's a beauty.
We got back to the car and headed off, as we were driving down the road away from the carpark we spotted a burst of sunlight that was hitting parts of the landscape in front of us. I stopped the car, grabbed the camera and tripod and took a couple of quick shots. I definitely prefer the photo that Tracy framed but I do quite like it.
It had been a day where we expected to get nothing but actually came away with a few. The original plan was to then tackle Back Tor in Castleton but by the time we got there the weather had gone back to terrible rain and wind. We decided to leave it and go back home. Not a bad days work :)