Today's views were taken around 8am as the sun was rising behind Park Nab. I walked up from the farm in the valley and in the shade it was really cold and in the shade of the hill I never fully warmed up. However as I got to the top the effort was rewarded with these spectacular views into Kildale framed to the left by the North York Moors and in the far distance the Pennines.
The second shot is of Park Nab and you can see the frosty path leading up to it and the glow of the morning sun behind.
Today is a bit of a milestone for me as this is my 500th blog post. I am so pleased that I have been able to keep this going for such a long time and I have been able to get out so often to collect new images to share. Hopefully along the way I have developed some skills and techniques. I have become more confident shooting in manual mode, choosing the settings for the image I want to capture and hopefully taking more of the pictures you like to see.
As well as having the right equipment it is important to have a good eye and I find that wherever I go now I am looking at things with a view to how they would look through the camera lens. I am seeing things that in the past I would just walk past and barely notice. For example the discarded fence post in today's selection.
I had spent a night camping in freezing temperatures and in the morning I wrapped up warm and walked up to Park Nab a rocky outcrop just off the Cleveland Way. It offered fantastic views into Kildale and across to the North York Moors which were glowing in the early morning sun. My feet hurt with the cold and as I headed back down to the campsite in order to pack up my gear I had pretty much decided that I had finished taking pictures for the time being, I really just needed to get warm. But then I spotted this rough old fence post lying in the frosty grass and I was struck by the patterns created by the frost and how delicate and how transient they are as the rising sun slowly touched the surface of the wood the frost was disappearing before my eyes.
In previous posts I have shown that I like frost, it makes mundane things appear quite magical. Here this piece of boring wood has been transformed and the frost has given it depth and character. I think the second image resembles a strand of hair as viewed under a microscope and with some careful cropping perhaps I could have passed it off as such.
Anyway I have rambled on quite enough for today and if you have made it this far thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for taking the time to stop by and look at my pictures and hopefully you will keep coming back for more.
Here's to the next 500 posts.
Last week I was able to take a week off work and I decided to head off to the North Yorkshire Moors to camp overnight on the coldest night of the year so far, it got down to -5C (and possibly less as my tent had a film of ice on both sides of the flysheet when I got up) . I was the sole camper on the site which was on a working livestock farm, so apart from the noises from the cows and sheep it was very quiet and peaceful.
As you can see from these photos it was a beautiful evening but very cold, and not long after the last picture was taken I got pelted with hail while I cooked my tea.
These views are looking west from Kildale, not far from Great Ayton which was the birth place of Captain James Cook. In the village of Gt Ayton there is a memorial to Captain Cook which is actually a replica of a monument erected in his honour in Australia. It stands on the site of the cottage where he lived but which has been dismantled and rebuilt in Victoria, Australia.
