Amateur Photographer Magazine

 Charlie Waite in the Lake District with Amateur Photographer - Lake District Diaries - Day One

Tuesday 10th November 2009

Damien Demolder

The hunters as the hunted - the happy group with Charlie and me

The chap in the room above me is obviously on the Light and Land/Amateur Photographer trip to the Lake District too. My alarm has hardly had time to catch its breath when two feet land with anvil-tread on the floor and thump across the room. A man who doesn't like to be caught unprepared – or at least one that likes to save time – it seems he's gone to bed with his boots on. I hear him hop to the window to check the 6am sky for stars – just as Charlie has instructed us. If the stars are out to play there will be pictures to be made, down by the Ullswater shores, as the sun begins to rise. From the dance back across the room that doesn't end in mattress landing, I guess the outlook is favourable. Clanking like a windmill built too close to a large rock, the extractor fan crashes into life above me, as if to confirm this chap means business. I had best get up too.

My residency in the south of England does nothing to prepare me for the dramatic low temperatures here in the lakes. Several days of rain have left the ground sodden, but the clear starry night has produced a hard, crispy, crunching frost that transforms the landscape to an early Christmas scene. I can see from the silhouetted figures leaning over three legged flamingos that I'm not the first to arrive at the shoreline. Mist hovers over the still waters and ice crusts the puddles and shallows. The scene is perfect and an industry of shutter fingers get to work. A full 14 eager AP readers are getting into their stride, as the soft voice of landscape maestro Charlie Waite floats through the glass air with encouraging remarks and gently wrapped guidance.


Glorious mist rises from the icey waters for our first dawn shoot. Perfect!

The key lessons of the morning are composition and exposure. Charlie has given out cards with a 3:2 rectangular aperture cut out so the readers can all practise their framing before lifting camera to eye. The white mist, glowing and backlit, does its best to fool the gathered exposure meters, but histograms are studied and discussed while the varied tones are nailed with craft to just the right spots. There is some discussion of white balance too, and I urge that the sunny warmth of the auto-balance is quickly replaced by cool-eye-colours as daylight modes take over. Catching what you see and sense on a morning like this is no easy feat, but success is all around us. Two hours later, with numb fingers and toes, we retire for a well-earned fry.


A deep blue sky makes a wonderful backdrop to shadowed mountains

With lunches packed and tripods clutched like rifles, we curl, tip and turn our way in a minibus to the tarn at Watendlath. The sun is now well and truly out and beats uncustomary heat from its almost-winter inclined angle - perfect stretched shadows while the still peaty waters mirror the warmth of the tweed brown trees and radiant blue sky.


There's not many can restist the draw of a lone tree?

Again the focus is on composition – specifically, here, identifying a subject in this grand view and then framing it with efficiency. Charlie advises to avoid too much sky, if any at all, as its blank and bright blue will burn out to white even with grad's. We climb the hills and lie in the wet grass to find the perfect angle. Many are found, compared and talked over before we're all happy. With ice still in the shadows and wet glistening rocks it's amazing only one camera takes a swim. A gasp, and a dripping and gritty minute's silence, before a replacement is found.


A stop at Surpirse View offers a spectacular but tricky vista

On the bus to the sunset stop – Castlerigg – the essentials of the neutral density graduated filter are learnt. Charlie talks about contrast range, securing highlights at the expense – if necessary – of shadows and the joys and evils of software. It's vital information, swallowed and digested by fast progressing ears. None of it helps much when the prayed-for fireball sun keeps its red streaking light trapped behind a wall of cloud. There's practice in the stone circle, lining up these upright fearsome mossy teeth and we all dream of good light. Desperation drives a new level of creativity and the group works harder to compensate for nature's harsh indifference to our plight. From what seems like nothing some gems are made.


A lack of good directional light does nothing to dampen enthusiasm

Knackered is never a polite word, but with laden cameras and chuffed photographers we return to base. Appraisal and dinner; some chat and then to bed. Dawn approaches fast and batteries, for cameras and photographers, need to be charged.

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