Description
Kingdale – A Hidden Treasure in the Dales
Join me for a photography course in Kingsdale, North Yorkshire. In a relaxed and supportive environment, you will develop your skills in landscape and nature photography.
You will be encouraged to learn about the use of lenses, exposure, composition and other aspects of nature photography. The course will take place over the full length of Kingsdale, including Thornton Force Waterfall. This is arguably the best waterfall in Yorkshire and has a large unbroken drop in to it’s plunge pool, around 50 feet below
Watch our video describing this beautiful dale and what we’ll be seeing on this workshop
Here is a drone video we took in the area
Kingdale
King Dale is one of the smaller Yorkshire Dales which starts at Thornton in Lonsdale and traverses the Western side of Whernside.
It is a beautiful flat-bottomed Valley with amazing views of Ingleborough on the lower stretches then flattens out for several miles. Towards the end it Rises steeply giving us stunning views over to the Howgill range and Dentdale.
Thornton Force
The undisputed highlight of this walk though will be the prettiest waterfall on the Ingleton waterfall walk, Thornton Force. rather than walking the full route we can park in Kingsdale and walk about half an hour down to the The Fall.
Meeting place
We will meet at the Marton Arms in Thornton in Lonsdale, This has a large car park which I’m sure will have ample room for us to gather.
From this point, we start our Trek out of civilization and up Thornton Lane. After a mile or two we pause for views of Ingleborough. This is one of the more striking mountains in the whole of the Dales and the view from this point is in my opinion one of the finest.
There are many limestone walls leading the eye to the mountain, we can use these in our compositions, and there are usually lots of sheep in the fields which add to that Dales feel.
Boulders and Trees
Our next stop will be 2 walk up to some of the Limestone boulders on the side of the Valley which have small hawthorn trees growing out of them.
The challenge here is to compose a lovely shot of the upper parts of Kingsdale with a tree and some boulders making up the foreground. These are Classic photographs and worth practicing, because you can use these skills anywhere in the Dales.
Focus Stacking
We often show you how to use “Focus Stacking” here, so you get a nice sharp boulder in one photo, a sharp tree in the next, and the background sharp in the last.
After this, we follow the path down to the river Twiss to find the cascades just before the waterfall and of course Thornton force itself. This is around 40 or 50 Feet High and has a beautiful shape to it, with lots of rocks and foreground interest to use. Here we will show you how to use long shutter speeds to blur the water and shorter shutter speeds to freeze the movement so you can get different styles of Waterfall.
Once we have finished at the waterfall, we will slowly head back to the cars to travel further up the valley, pausing in a few places to get some great shots of the Valley behind. You will see the flat bottomed Valley, straddled with ancient limestone walls.
Deepdale and Dentdale Views
When we reach the summit of the road, you will see one of my favourite views in the Dales, looking into Deepdale. This is an offshoot from the parent valley, Dentdale. In the far distance, there are some striking rounded mountains called the How Gills. This is one of those locations where a long lens works for landscape photos, so definitely pack your longer lenses for this workshop. 200mm is ideal.
This is the view we will use for the sunset, so depending on the time we arrive, this will be the end of the workshop. If we have an hour or two to spare, we can travel down the hill to a pretty waterfall on the side of the road called Gastak Beck Waterfall.
Who is it for…
The workshop is friendly and supportive with lots of time to stop, consider what you see through the lens, consider your settings, adjust your settings and try again until you get it right.
This is everything that I wanted from a photo course when I was learning (way back when…) : how to improve my photos so that I become a better photographer.
The walk to the waterfall is around a mile and a bit hilly, but we take our time – there’s no rush, so if you’re not at your athletic peak, you’ll be fine.
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