Wild Camp No.1

Seems an age ago now... but right at the start of May, sick of not seeing a sunrise for a whole month, I decided to go camping. Those of you that have been following my photo-ing for a while will know that I don't have a car (I can in principle drive, but this is the life of a student who spends all his PhD money on photo gear) so I rely on the Hope Valley train line to get me places. The earliest train is 6.20am, arriving about half an hour later - which for the winter months is absolutely fine (if quite an effort to rush up hills in time) - but this was my first summer of serious photography so it didn't take long for me to get itchy feet.

As usual, all the photos in this post are available, or can be made available, on my website.

I've never woken up to a better view.

Edale Skyline

Ow do everyone!

It is quite unbelievable just how behind I am these days - so much for what started as my 'I'll post every week' rule, which then became 'every two weeks' and is now somewhere around the yearly mark. I thought I'd best put this one up though as for me, it was quite an achievement - my longest walk ever at 22.5 miles (until the 3 Peaks in two months time). A good few miles longer than my previous best, 17 miles in deep snow - which can be seen here.

This is a very well known charity-type walk, and some crazies even run a variation of it in the Edale Skyline Fell Race - so it was something I'd been meaning to do for quite a while. Starting in Hope, you walk (as the name suggests) around the skyline of the upper Hope Valley, overlooking Edale. This takes in Crookstone Out Moor, Kinder Scout, Brown Knoll, Lord's Seat, Mam Tor, Back Tor and Lose Hill, so plenty of ups and downs - but I thought I'd also include a couple of detours. The larger detour being to include Win Hill by walking up around the back near Ladybower before continuing along the usual route - and also a shorter, boggier detour to what *was* the highest point on Kinder Scout.

Great Shunner Fell

A couple of weeks back we went for a lovely warm walk up the 3rd tallest hill in the Yorkshire Dales, Great Shunner Fell - which overlooks both Swaledale and Wensleydale. In general there seems to be no good round walk from Thwaite as there is only a single path up, the Pennine Way, which continues south to Hawes. So whilst there will be no spectacular photos in this post I thought it might be useful to someone, somewhere, to see how we did it - especially navigating the dreaded peat bogs on our chosen route down.

Steep sided Buttertubs Pass - some lovely light too.

Help!... or any ideas?

This is not really a post, just a note and question regarding a problem with my photo-processing.

I've been using Canon's DPP software for ages but increasingly I come up against this message: "Insufficient memory. Cannot open file.". I understand, under normal circumstances, why this would pop up and as such close any unnecessary programs to free up some space etc... but, as an example, right now I have 5gb of  memory available (from a total of 8gb) and the folder I'm trying to open in DPP only has 6 jpegs in it. 

I'd understand this problem if I had hundreds of programs running, or was trying to open a folder of 500 RAW files or something ridiculous... but it's getting to the point now where I simply can't even open anything in order to look at my photos...

So, what am I missing? Any ideas? Everything on the internet just says to subdivide my folders - but, like I say, that starts to take the piss a little bit when I'm already down to 6 jpegs...

Thank you for anyone's help in advance!

Updates so far:
- Tried clearing cache - no effect
- Tried deleting temp files - still nothing.

Just Another Mam Tor Walk

This one seems such a long time ago now. Way back in February in what I thought might be the last snow of the winter (how wrong I was!) I headed out for my last sunrise shoot of the year. Relying on trains means that the earliest I can arrive at Edale is 6.55am so as sunrise gets earlier, it gets increasingly difficult before becoming impossible. On this occasion the sun was due to rise at 7.16 - so I had 21 minutes exactly to reach the ridge... and I have to admit, even I never thought I'd be able to make it up in that time, not least carrying all my usual kit. However, I did. Jogging as much of it as possible, and instead of heading directly up to Mam Tor but towards Hollins Cross - my feet stepped onto the footpath along the top at the exact moment the sun popped over the horizon, I couldn't quite believe it. I'm pretty sure the one other photographer up there that morning couldn't believe what he saw either, me turning up in just a t-shirt in subzero temperatures on top of a somewhat exposed hill... but he didn't witness the effort I had to put in to get there!

Remember, you can buy this or any other photo on this blog from www.matrobinsonphoto.co.uk - if you can't see it on there just send me a message!

Prints For Sale

Hello,

After Sheffield Adventure Film Festival ended, I have a number of unsold prints which I would love to be able to sell to free up some space in my flat! That, and they're obviously beautiful pictures which you'd love to see in your home. Below are a series of photographs, and the caption for each one will have details of what sizes are available and how much I shall be charging. Photos are from the Peak District, The Dales, Richmond, Essex and Sheffield.

If any of these interest you then please just follow this link, which will redirect you to the contact form on my site, let me know which photo you'd like and in what size and we can arrange payment (probably via Paypal). The prices here don't include p&p - but this can discussed depending on the way you would like it delivered. A rough guide to delivery prices based on the middle sized prints can be found at the bottom of the page. Ordering multiple prints will save on p&p.

Unless otherwise stated, these photos are mounted onto good quality 2mm card, with a white border. This is so that they either fit common frame sizes or can be trimmed to do so. Please note that most do not have a front (window) mount - as they are usually supplied with the frames. All sizes are in inches.

I'll try to update this as much as possible but sorry if something has already gone and I've not got around to removing it yet!

Kinder in the Snow

This is my post on my walk up Kinder in the snow a couple of weeks back. This was one of my favourite walks due to being relatively new to winter walking and setting myself a very tough challenge in terms of time. I only set off on this walk at 3pm and the aim was to climb up the eastern edge of Grindsbrook Clough, around the top to Grindslow Knoll for sunset at 5pm before rushing down for the 5.30pm train back to Sheffield where, misleadingly, there was little snow. I'd never taken this route up before but it soon became obvious that it was going to be a race against time to make it up this steep track through deep snow and all the way around in time for my all important sunset. On the way up I had an extra little bit of excitement getting to watch the path repairs being made - helicopter and all - quite amazing the manoeuvres it could do as it swung around up and down the side of the valley.