High Force

 Part of the Raby Estate just outside of Middleton in Teesdale, in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is High Force. "Force" being taken from the Viking word for waterfall. The waterfall is 21 metres high with a vertical drop.

The river Tees flows over the rocky outcrop and when the water level in the river is high it flows either side of the central column thundering into the cauldron below. In my 100th blog post in Dec 2014 I posted a couple of shots of the waterfall in full flow, from a similar position on the rocks as these shots were taken however that close to the falls on that occasion I was covered in spray as was the lens of my camera so the images were not so clear. It certainly wasn't possible to do long exposures like these however I would say it is worth a look just for the comparison so click on the highlighted link above.

I have heard that on very rare occasions the river completely covers the whole outcrop falling in one complete curtain of thundering water, I have not seen it like that.

These shots were taken on a relatively fine day (20th march 2023). I used my Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L series lens a variable ND filter with an ISO of 100 and the aperture at f22 The first image was at 45mm and the others at 58mm. the first two images were shot with a 13 second exposure and for contrast the third was taken using a 20 second exposure.

This final image was shot at 40mm with f/6.3 and an exposure of 1/40 sec. I have included a person in the picture for scale and at a faster shutter speed you can see how rough the water is and how effective the long exposures above have been in terms of smoothing out the falls and the surface of the water in the cauldron below.