Making the Effort. A Walk Round Winscar Reservoir.

As Rod Stewart once said “It’s late September and I really should be back at school”, but instead I really should be updating my blog just in case someone actually reads the thing! Another thing I really should be doing is making the effort to go out and take some photographs. It’s supposed to be what I do. It’s far too easy to make up an excuse and convince my lazy self that I’ve got more important stuff to faff about with. It might rain, it’s too windy, it’s too cold. But as a wiser man than me once said “Excuses are like arse-holes, everybody’s got one!” (Sgt Red O’Neill in Oliver Stone’s film ‘Platoon’)

I always know that making the effort, going out with my camera is never a waste. Even if I don’t get any images I’m out in the fresh air for a while, having a walk. There have been a few occasions when I’ve been out and not even taken my camera out of its bag yet I have never regretted making the effort. Not once have I wished I hadn’t bothered dragging my lazy arse out of the front door.

Yesterday I made the effort. I walked around my local patch on the moorland near Winscar Reservoir in the South Yorkshire pennies. The weather was wonderful, dramatic, dynamic.

No excuses, no arse-holes. Nor should there be, I live in a beautiful place where many photographers would dream of being. The magnificent Yorkshire pennies are quite literally outside my front door (and I literally mean, ‘literally’!).

Video of the Walk

YouTube video of my walk around Winscar.
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The route I took around Winscar reservoir wasn’t particularly demanding but rough and inaccessible enough to make it a solitary walk sharing it with only one other person who I kept seeing in the distance ahead of me on the path. Maybe four miles in total on public access land where you can wander freely most of the year the exception being when the land is closed for shooting, these being grouse moors.

There were plenty of sheep to photograph. They are becoming a staple subject in my portfolio over the years and people can’t seem to get enough of them! Wildlife I encountered included several kestrels zipping about in the steep gullys or hanging rock steady in the breeze over the fading heather and a few buzzards floating laconically in lazy circles across the sky. A special treat was a red kite patrolling low along the ridge line of Snailsden Edge twisting its forked tail as it manoeuvred low over the bleached grass.

Yes, glad I made the effort.