Life in Lockdown

Our new Nikon D750 arrived on New Year's Eve. At any other time we would have made a trip to the Lake District, the Peak District or North Wales, all places in close proximity to our Lancashire home so we could really test the camera out. Alas the latest lockdown has scuppered that and whilst we absolutely understand the reasons for the lockdown and are vehemently sticking to the rules, I can't deny it has been a little frustrating not being able get out and about, particularly with all the great wintery weather the North West has been having. I'm sure if you're a photographer you get this.

It has however given us the opportunity to start exploring our local area and discover some fairly great places that we probably would not have found otherwise. Take this small wooded area that we decided to explore after photographing a misty sunrise. The bare trees had allowed the snow of previous days to settle in patches throughout the woodland, creating a soft, yet crunchy carpet of frozen flakes combined with hibernating blackberry bushes and ivy.

We only decided to explore it on a whim and it's testament to the fact that something so unassuming can actually be pretty great. Okay, it's not Grizedale Forest, but it's local and right now that's all that matters. The next weekend we headed back up in that direction just as a veil of mist, a photographer's holy grail we are quickly learning, had descended on another area of woodland nearby and whilst our composition wasn't quite on point this time, it was still good to find somewhere else that's local to us and be able to experiment a little. A few days later, we were treated to a very foggy morning, freezing fog in fact, so we returned to the first wooded area which was still frozen with patches of snow from our previous visit. It's amazing how much the weather can change a landscape. The first time we visited. the wood was bathed in warm rays of light from the rising sun. This time it was dark and eerie, tree branches disappearing in the mist and drawing you further in.

Last weekend we returned to the second area of woodland and ventured a little further this time. We must have driven past this woodland hundreds of times but we've never really noticed it before. It's definitely somewhere we want to revisit when the fog returns, whenever that might be. This time wasn't particularly great; the snow had long melted and had been replaced by swaths of mud from biblical amounts of rain. We did come across a few trees, their branches twisted and gnarled and we felt they would look great against a misty backdrop so we will wait in anticipation for that enigmatic mist to return. In the meantime we'll watch some of our favourite photographers on YouTube and research some places to go after lockdown whilst practicing our photography skills locally.

Stay safe.

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