The Golden Cathedral, Lake District

A few days in the Lake District

This past week I've been up in the Lake District, enjoying a few days of rest and relaxation, catching up with friends and fitting in a few walks here and there. It wasn't really intended to be a photography trip, although obviously the camera came with me because I'm apparently incapable of going anywhere without one. I wasn't going with a list of locations to visit or particular photographs I needed to come home with, so it was actually quite nice to just take things as they came.

The weather was certainly more suited to a relaxing break than landscape photography. We had clear blue skies, bright sunshine and generally rather lovely conditions, which is great when you're out enjoying the Lakes but doesn't necessarily lend itself to the sort of images I usually enjoy capturing. I'm generally looking for atmosphere, interesting light, mist, cloud and dramatic weather, so a cloudless blue sky and bright sunshine can make things surprisingly difficult.

To be honest, the real draw was probably the pub. Sitting outside in the sunshine with a beer, catching up with friends and enjoying a few days away was probably exactly what I needed. Sometimes it's actually quite nice to leave the pressure of photography behind and simply enjoy being somewhere without constantly thinking about where the light is coming from or whether there's a photograph around the next corner.

That said, I did manage to take a couple of photographs while I was there, and now that I'm back home and have had a proper look through them, the classic view inside Cathedral Quarry has turned out rather nicely. It's certainly not an original composition; this is one of those locations that has been photographed countless times and I suspect anyone who has visited with a camera has probably taken something similar. But sometimes there's nothing wrong with photographing a classic scene simply because you like it.

Dealing with the light

Cathedral Quarry presents an interesting challenge from a photographic point of view. Standing inside the cave, you're effectively dealing with two very different lighting environments. The interior is relatively dark, while outside the entrance you're looking towards a much brighter landscape and sky. Trying to retain detail throughout the entire scene means asking quite a lot of the camera's dynamic range.

For this image I bracketed a series of exposures to capture as much of that range as possible, timing each exposure around people passing through the cave. It wasn't quite as straightforward as simply setting up the tripod and firing away, as I needed to wait for those brief moments when the composition was clear. In a busy location, sometimes getting the photograph is as much about patience as it is about camera settings.

When I got home and started processing the files, I found myself faced with a decision I hadn't really anticipated. I could retain the deep blue of the sky outside the entrance, but when I did so, it felt slightly at odds with the bright sunlight pouring into the cave. Technically the information was there, but retaining it didn't necessarily make the photograph feel more natural.

In the end, I made the decision to let the highlights blow slightly. It's not normally something I'm particularly comfortable with, especially when I've deliberately bracketed the exposures to capture the full dynamic range of the scene. There is always a temptation to try and retain every last bit of information because modern cameras are capable of doing so much, but sometimes technically preserving something doesn't necessarily make the photograph better.

In this case, allowing some of the brighter areas around the entrance to lose detail seemed to make the sunlight feel more believable. Rather than trying to control every highlight, it gives the impression of actually looking from a darker cave towards bright sunlight outside.

I'm still a little conflicted about the decision and part of me wonders whether I should have tried harder to retain that blue sky, but having looked at the finished image for a while, I think it was probably the right call.

Perhaps that's one of the nice things about coming home from a trip like this without any particular photographic expectations. There was no pressure to produce anything, no particular shot I had to get and no need to chase the weather. I was simply enjoying a few days in the Lake District, camera in hand, and happened to come home with an image that I'm genuinely pleased with.

Sometimes that's more than enough.