Yorkshire Dales Limestone Pavements Photography Workshop

Without a doubt, if you're looking to photograph the finest, the most varied and the most dramatic areas of Limestone scenery in the country, then you have to venture into the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Although there are pockets of Limestone in some other parts, both the size of these areas, and the sheer diversity of the geology make the Dales incomparable to anywhere else in the U.K.

Rather than only heading for the most well known locations, we will also concentrate our efforts on one or two lesser known, but (in my opinion anyway) much more impressive and interesting areas of Limestone pavement. Many of these areas benefit from spectacular views towards the famous 'Three Peaks' of Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent and Whernside. Expect to photograph dramatic Limestone clad valleys, Gnarled, wind sculpted Hawthorn Trees, limestone cliffs and crags as well as some of the more typical dales countryside, including traditional stone field barns and dry stone walls. Many of the locations we will visit do not have that 'obvious' shot or one that you will have seen before on numerous occasions. Therefore they provide a compositional challenge, and this, to my mind makes these locations perfect for a workshop situation and gaining more of an understanding of how to compose your own images.

We never work to a rigid location plan as this just doesn't work. Instead we will attempt to work with the prevailing weather, conditions and light in an effort to make the very best possible images for that particular day. Because of the sheer diversity of the Dales landscape, it's always easy to have a number of backup plans at our disposal, just in case the weather has its' own ideas, and it's possible that we could visit the odd waterfall in amongst the Limestone scenery if conditions dictate. We will usually have a break for food around the midway point of the day, either for a late breakfast or lunch and this also provides the perfect opportunity to review images from the morning as well as walking through some of the basic image editing steps in both Adobe Lightroom and photoshop.

There will be some walking on this workshop and some of it will be uphill, so you should have an average level of fitness. The longer walks are no more than around thirty to forty five minutes in duration, but are obviously taken at your own pace. Most walks will be less than this. Some of the paths we will walk can be rutted, rocky and uneven in places so you should be reasonably steady on your feet. A typical day will last around ten hours and include a sunrise/sunset or both depending on the time of year. This is a group workshop, but the number of participants is limited to a maximum of five. This means I can share lots of time between everyone on an individual basis over the course of the full day. All tuition is tailored to individual requirement to enable you to gain exactly what it is you'd like to achieve from the day. This also makes the workshop suitable for all levels of Photographer form complete beginner and above.