Three Shot Challenge

‘The Druids Writing Desk’

It’s always good to challenge yourself creatively. Sometimes it can be difficult to push yourself though. I was recently asked to take part in a photography challenge and it’s fair to say, it forced me to change the way I normally approach landscape photography. 

Dave Peck got in touch and explained he would be driving up from Essex for a little trip to Yorkshire. He was hoping that I could show him a great photography location in the county. This was the easy part, here in Yorkshire we are spoiled for choice when it comes to locations. The coast, the moors and the Dales all offer some amazing places to spend time with a camera. As Dave was staying in York and had already had a long journey, I decided to limit the location to within 1 hour of the city. As it was going to be late afternoon into the evening, the best light would be facing west. The east facing coast was quickly ruled out. 

What I came up with was Brimham Rocks. If you have never heard of it, I urge you to look it up. The site covers 450 acres and is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The place it littered with millstone grit, sandstone boulders that have been weathered over millions of years into some truly amazing shapes. Some like the Druids Idol, seem to defy gravity. 

Once I had the location sorted, Dave had a plan. To start with he didn’t want to know anything about the location. The idea was to see it for the first time, take three images and we would compare afterwards. The challenge was certainly harder for himself as he truly had no idea where he was going. I had visited the place plenty of times over the years. It was a favourite childhood day trip and I continued to visit when I had children of my own. One thing I had never done was visit with photography truly Iin mind. I’d taken my camera along in the past but usually in mid afternoon, in poor light and when the place was literally crawling with kids. Although not entirely a level playing field, it wasn’t going to be an easy ride for me. A time limit of 90 minutes increased the challenge. 

When we arrived, I showed Dave some of the key locations, the more famous rocks and allowed him to get his bearings. We filmed a little intro for our respective YouTube channels and then went our separate ways, agreeing to meet back at the carpark later.  

I won’t go into detail about the compositions we found and the images we captured. Please check out the Youtube videos to really see how the challenge went. 

It was certainly interesting to see how two different photographers saw a location and what compositions caught their eye. We were using very similar camera and lens combinations, but the resulting images are very different. Of course, some of that is down to how the images were processed and personal preference. 

It was certainly a worthwhile experience and as a photographer, I really felt I got a lot out of the day. Fingers crossed for another challenge soon.