Stockghyll Falls in Autumn Colour 29 th oct 2012

After the superb couple of hours walking around Rydal Water in the morning shooting the reflections, i have now driven back to Ambleside  and the water falls along Stockghyll lane are my afternoon target.   these are one of my favourite waterfalls to shoot in the autumn, last year i missed the best colours so hopefully they will be good when i get up there :).
i have taken the path next to the hotel and walking up the steep lane towards the falls, the colours are looking very good but not much sun to light them up unfortunately :)    it amazes me every time i set up the tripod to shoot a road shot, an endless stream of people come along to really piss me off!  guess what has just happened ?  , yes you guessed correct . loads of people walking up the steep hill as slow as humanly possible!!! Arghhhhhh    i have just managed one image so far and now a guy with a walking stick has just inched past me!  I give up !!!!!!!  will take him half an hour to get out of the way.   here is the one image.

continuing up the hill in a bit of a mood , i have reached the small gate that leads to the waterfalls , i do hope the leaves are still on the trees to give colour around the falls !    not to worry, the short track to the first lower falls looks great ,  i clamber down to the first falls and start shooting a series of images with slightly different compositions.

making my way up to the top fall it soon became apparent that the leaves had fallen from alot of the trees above this part.  i shoot the main fall with its curved curtain of water, looks quite good today, there used to be a red obstacle in the middle of the weir which appears to have been removed sometime.  Yay!

onwards and upwards i go, the middle section looks quite barren of leaves unfortunately, this part usually looks stunning when in colour but not today!  so i just shot the boulders  ha ha

the other side of the bridge ,up the narrow stream is quite difficult to shoot and i don't think i have managed to get any reasonable images this time :(

i cross the bridge and start climbing the path up to the main top falls, stopping near to the top to shoot just the top part of the falls first from the left hand side of the stream.

crossing over the top bridge and down the other side, there is a good spot half way down that gives an almost clear view of the stunning falls, tripod has to be at its maximum height to shoot over the steel fence!   i have shot 3 frames and merged them together for this image.  i have seen the colours looking  better in previous years , but its pretty good at the moment :D

I can go back and shoot the lower falls again now on way back down, still got a few more compositions in mind , only takes a slight different composition to make a big difference to the image.   both of these images are focus stacked to increase depth of field, just as an experiment. i have tried this before on landscapes but never looked right , but in this case with no view to a horizon it works very well :)

The end of a superb day in the lakes, amazing reflections in the morning with a waterfall shoot in the afternoon , doesn't get much better than this :)