Hackfall Wood Fountain

During the first time I visited the Hackfall Wood in North Yorkshire the fountain wasn’t working – not that I knew of the fountain before I arrived.  This time, however, it was.  As I understand it, there is a small reservoir on the hill behind it, when the reservoir fills a valve opens and the water swooshes down to end in the fountain.  It’s between 10 to 20 minutes to fill the reservoir which gives an activation of around 1 minute.  The reservoir is filled by a small beck, which I guess would rush down the hillside anyway, (eroding it over time, no doubt).

As it happens, this is, with a few others I took at the time, probably one of the worst outcomes I’ve had – I used a graduated ND filter to bring the sky into the exposure range, in front of a circular polariser to cut down on the glare, and I used f/22 on a focal length of 17mm.   Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account that the grad filter is now quite scratched, which meant each frame showed up nearly all the scratches – thank goodness for photoshop.  I will have to carry out some tests to see if I can still use the filter at lower apertures/longer focal lengths – or discard the thing altogether.  Unfortunately, the filters are not cheap to replace.

——Stephen——