Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

The Valley of Desolation is not as desolate as you would expect. The name actually refers to a flash flood that cleared the whole area in the Great Storm of 1826. The valley is just opposite Bolton Abbey and is a place I have been to a few times and where I'd had a couple of OK pictures. This time I was armed with wellies to see what I could compose from the other side of the river. What struck me was how lush the area was and there is a fallen tree (normally getting in the way of compositions) that had ferns and grasses growing on it. Using this as foreground and letting the background fall out of focus slightly, I waited for the appropriate moment to trigger the 60 second exposure. I needed to graduated neutral density filters which gave me 5 stops of grad in total however one of these stops was to compensate for bellows factor (a reduction in light caused by focusing on close objects).

The result look very little like a part of yorkshire and with the animal like branch sticking out this could almost be a seen from the jurassic. The long exposure has created a lace like veil of water.