The Ingleton Waterfalls Trail is a beautiful 4 mile circular route that starts and ends in the town of Ingleton in Yorkshire. Taken clockwise you start off up the River Twiss, cut a short distance across country before coming back down to Ingleton via the River Doe. Further information can be found at www.ingletonwaterfallstrail.co.uk/

As you might well expect from the name, the route takes you past many waterfalls – including the impressive Thornton Force. For a photographer it’s a great way to spend a day or an afternoon, with best enjoyment coming from taking along a tripod and some neutral density filters to slow down the shutter speed.

This first shot was taken at Pecca Force, which is reached not far along the walk. The paths alongside are well maintained with wooden fences, that can help make for a sturdy resting place for a tripod. I was shooting with my trusty Fuji X100T with WCL adaptor attached. The X100T has a useful 3-stop ND built-in, which was activated to help slow down the shutter speed. The log seems to be a relatively new addition to the scene – at least it wasn’t there on my last visit!

Following the well maintained path leads past other waterfalls before eventually bringing you out in front of Thornton Force. At this point I decided to scramble up the hill-side to look for a wider viewpoint of the scene. I like this image, but I think it would look better a bit later in the year with some fresh shoots on the trees and some better light. It’s gone into my notebook as a composition to return to in better light!

Scrambling down to the water’s edge itself I then looked to set myself up for the shot above. Compositionally I was looking to balance the falls with some foreground interest, but also manage the large block on the left of the image which can unbalance images shot from this location if you’re not careful. Technically it was fairly standard tripod procedure – manual focus with stopped down aperture to give sharpness through the scene; low iso for both image quality and also slower shutter speed; remote release to avoid any vibration; and the built in 3-stop ND filter to further reduce the shutter speed.

As always the X-Trans sensor on the X100T produced a great RAW file to work with. On the unprocessed scene I felt the eye was being drawn to easily out of the frame, so some vignetting has been added to help prevent this. I’ll revisit the photo again with fresh eyes in a few weeks and tweak further before printing, but I think the base idea will remain the same.

Not long after Thornton Force the walk takes you out of the valley and across a small section of fields. Ingleborough looked menacing on the horizon, with just a dusting of snow to tempt the walkers. Our route took us back down into the valley of the River Doe, where further waterfalls awaited.

The falls in this section half of the walk are just as numerous, but perhaps harder to gain access to from a photographic point of view. I experimented with a few long exposures of the small falls above, trying to work with the swirling foam in the foreground to create a sense of movement to the scene.

All in all it was a great afternoon out. It the first time I’ve been for a few years and hopefully the gap until my next visit won’t be as long.

Thanks for reading,

Andrew.