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Autumn Photography in the Lake District 2018

Every year in autumn I make at least one trip to the English Lake District, to capture the glorious autumn colours. This year I managed to get to the Lake District at the end of October just as the colours were coming to be their best. It's always difficult to choose a location in the Lake District as there are so many places which offer so many opportunities. This year,I decided to base myself next to Ullswater lake. From this base, I was able to visit a wide range of locations, some with wide open vistas others with close intimate woodland scenes. The weather this year wasn't as favourable as in previous years, but I still did my best to capture the light when it did shine through the low cloud cover. In the Lake District, even when the weather isn't favourable there still many opportunities for landscape photography. It really is a case of getting out there and making the best of the weather as there are times when it does turn and become more favourable. On this occasion, I did have a few brief moments of fantastic light and tried to make the best of it when it did shine through.

Ullswater

On the first day of the trip, I started the day on the shores of Ullwater lake. Having been up and out for sunrise only to find poor weather and low visibility, I was pleased when the weather began to clear as we travelled down the lake towards Glenridding. Due to the way the mountains faced, the light did not shine on foreground at any point so I had to make my way up higher to view the scene from above. It was at this point that we had some of the best light on the whole weekend trip. It was very difficult to capture because the light came and went ever so quickly so I had to make use of the road of the foreground leading us into the scene. This is one of my favourite images from trip but I'm still to be able to process this picture to do justice to and represent the dramatic scene that we viewed.

When the weather is bad in the Lake District,There is always the opportunity to go hunting for waterfalls. I'm still adding images to my Lake District waterfalls guide and on this occasion we headed down Borrowdale to visit and photograph Galleny Force. I have visited this waterfall previously but this was during the summer, on this occasion the weather has been quite wet so water levels have risen in the river giving a much more dramatic scene, particularly with the autumn colour.

After finishing shooting the waterfall we headed back to Borrowdale for short walk through the Borrowdale valley. The weather at this point was still quite overcast but there were signs of the sun breaking through the clouds. I captured a number of images whilst cloud was overhead but also dashed into the the woodland when the sun began to break through illuminating Castle Crag and the Borrowdale Woodland.

Overall, the trip was a great success even though the weather was particularly bad at some point during weekend. My next trip to the Lake District will be during the winter season hoping to capture the ice and snow on the Lake District Fells.