Tag: Lens-Artists Challenge #137

This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge #137 invites us to bring softness to our shots. What Bren – who set the challenge – means, is that she’d like us to enjoy playing with effects – available in various software packages – to enhance our photos. The trouble is, I don’t really enjoy doing this. I often crop my shots, I may adjust the light, then I’m done. I admire the results that other people get, but I don’t hanker after doing it for myself. I rely on the weather or light conditions to do the job for me .

So as it’s Flashback Friday, I’ve dug out a walk from 2020 which began, unexpectedly, in thick fog. It didn’t end in thick fog. so if that’s what you’re looking for, stop reading when you get to the lunch stop. But then go straight to the end, because I couldn’t resist adding another 2020 photo, taking during Lockdown, when I’d sometimes get up at about 5.30 to enjoy the sunrise.

If you’re reading because, like Jo of Jo’s Monday Walk fame, you enjoy a good walk, feel free to carry on till you get to the end.

Fog and mist, cloud and sun

Weather forecast.  Cold, but bright and sunny.  That sounded perfect for a walk in Wharfedale.  Starting and finishing at the forbiddingly-named Grimwith Reservoir, and taking a fine circular route to and from Burnsall would give us extensive panoramas over the hills of the Yorkshire Dales.

Except that on the way there, an impenetrable curtain of fog descended.  To walk?  Or not to walk? My friend and I had both made the effort to get there.  So we’d walk.

And for nearly an hour, this was our landscape.  No hills, no dales, but just the occasional gate, or tussocky grass, or – sometimes – sheep.

Then – suddenly it seemed – this.

The sky lightened and brightened, and the countryside we’d come to see developed before our eyes like those Polaroid photos that once seemed so exciting.

Soon we were at Burnsall, our half-way mark.  A hearty yomp up hill brought us to a bench, where we saw in turn black skies, grey skies, blue skies: and views, always with the village below us.

After lunch, a further climb, and then level walking back to where we’d begun our day.  But this time we had the views we’d come to see, and at the end, the quiet tints of the reservoir.

It hard turned out that this walk, so unpromising to begin with, had become memorable, as the heavy mist added another dimension to familiar territory, and gave a special beauty to the landscape.

And here is my Optional Extra …