View allAll Photos Tagged crackpots
Couple of days in The Dales in very windy conditions. Checked the forecast records for the day and the average wind speed was 34mph with the highest recorded gust of 57mph.
Felt much stronger than that in exposed areas. Gave up trying to use the tripod after our walk up to Crackpot Hall in the morning.
A very windy early morning walk to Crackpot Hall from Keld. The cloud was moving through at pace with an occasional pocket of light bathing the village across the valley cut by the River Swale far below.
Another view from the top of crackpot Falls in Swaledale. An interesting waterfall to compose and capture due to difficult access (unless you want to be right at the edge). I did make the mistake at one point of looking over the edge!
Wooden footbridge at the Old Danube (Alte Donau). It connects the residential area of Kaisermühlen with the Dampfschiffhaufen peninsula, a former alluvial island in the unregulated Danube, where police sports facilities and allotment gardens are located today.
Kaisermühlen is part of the 22nd district of Vienna. It became famous in the German speaking countries in the 1990s through the TV series "Kaisermühlen Blues". And the Polizeisteg, in turn, gained notoriety through the two dim-witted local politicians Schoitl and Gneisser, who contrived many a crackpot idea on this bridge.
I needed to get out with the camera, so headed out to Swaledale in the hope of getting up to the ruins at Crackpot Hall in the moody weather.
I arrived at Keld in monsoonal conditions with poor visibility, so I ate my sandwiches in the car and then reclined the seats and had a sleep in the hope of waiting the rain out. I woke up after about an hour and the rain had subsided so decided to go for it. The clouds lifted a bit so I headed up to the ruins and then on to the Old Lead Mines at Swinner Gill. The conditions were pretty good for waterfalls and as I had my Circular Polariser with me I decided to try my luck.
Conditions improved on the way down and I got my shots of the Old Hall ruins, which had been on my list for over 3 years. At least I had Keld and the surrounds to myself given the conditions!
Selma, Ca.
The building has been a bar for many years. I guess they have found Jesus now. The reference to the 99 is Highway 99, which is just a couple of blocks away, however the street this is on was the old Highway 99.
Horace has been working overseas for many weeks and a pork of the job was a left hand drive courtesy car.
On his return I asked him to drive us to Crackpot Haven to capture a few images, yet he seemed a bit reluctant as having the steering wheel on the right again made him apprehensive.
After reassuring him that his driving would be okay, off we went, yes he hit the hedge a couple of times but no damage done.
Following a bit of a sunset we made our way back to the car, then Horace’s little face really lit up, there was a note on his windscreen which complemented him on his driving ability, it said ‘Parking Fine’
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'Crackpot' is one of my favourite 'daft' names for places up here in North Yorkshire. Apparently it stems from the old English for crow, 'kraka' and the Norse word 'pot' (as in pot-hole). It's also known as Haverdale Falls, Splendid waterfall whatever the name. Taken after a fair few April showers.
From Crackpot to Gunnerside, Upper Swaledale. After effects of recent storms & flooding can been seen in the water lying in the fields. Taken from The Fleak road.
Somewhere I have another photo of the waterfall, only it is a lot different, the farmer had diverted the waterfall, and at the time I hadn't realised it.
April 2023: A month in 30 pictures
I found this feather, I think it's from an owl, in the garden. The pigeon egg shell is cracked and it was a bit of a crackpot idea to place an owl feather on a pigeon shell but there we have it...another day down.
Taken yesterday during a day's photography on my own in Yorkshire in preparation for my one day workshop in Muker, Gunnerside and West Burton today.
Firstly I must thank Edward Russell for making me aware of this wonderful waterfall in the most delightful of places, Haverdale Beck in Crackpot (what a great name Crackpot is and quite appropriate for me to spend some time there from those who know me, lol)
I arrived a little after lunch before making my way down to the base of the waterfall to spend a lovely two hours all alone photographing this wonderful waterfall. After spending some time walking and looking around for a decent composition, I eventually settled on these beautiful moss covered rocks (yes they really were that green). A Nisi Polariser made light work of the white light on the water in and around the rocks. I used a Nisi 0.6 Hard ND Grad filter to darken down the upper half of the image where the sunlight was flooding through. This in turn lightened up the lower half of the image and in particular the mossy rocks.
No other filters were needed to slow the water down. I also took four images and focused on four areas of the image before focus stacking them in Photoshop CC to ensure that it was sharp back to front. This also allowed me to shoot the scene at f8 which was my preferred aperture. I hope you like the image and if you wish to share it, please feel free. Many thanks in advance :D
Canon 5D MK4
Canon 16-35mm f4 @ 22mm
f8
1/3 sec
ISO400
Nisi Polariser
Nisi 0.6 ND Grad filter
Four images focus stacked in Photoshop CC
Benro TMA48CXL Mach 3 Tripod
Benro GD3WH Geared Head
Mindshift Backlight 36L Bag
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The ruins of Crackpot Hall lie about a mile east of Keld on the northern slope of the dale. There may have been a building on this site since the 16th century when a hunting lodge was maintained for Thomas, the first Baron Wharton, who visited the Dale occasionally to shoot the red deer. Survey work by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has shown that the building has changed many times over the years. At one time it even had a heather or "ling" thatched roof.
The current ruin is of a farmhouse dating from the mid 18th century. It was an impressive two-storey building with a slate roof and matching "shippons" or cow sheds at each end for animals. The building may also have been used as mine offices, as intensive lead mining was carried out in the area, and there were violent disputes over mine boundaries in the 18th century.
In the 1930s Ella Pontefract and Marie Hartley wrote of a wild 4-year-old child living here by the name of Alice.
The current building was abandoned in the 1950s because of subsidence. Crackpot Hall has been saved from further decay by Gunnerside Estate with the aid of grants from the Millennium Commission and European Union through the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust.
The name Crackpot is said to be Viking for "a deep hole or chasm that is a haunt of crows".
A focus stacked shot of a waterfall near to Keld in Swaledale, which I took a couple of months ago en route up to Crackpot Hall.
Crackpot Falls in Swaledale. A challenge to compose and capture. The spray from the falls lingers in the air for quite some distance causing havoc with the filters. Even so its a great location to add to my ever growing list of re-visits.
Time for a bit of a change. The Yorkshire Dales is chock fall of waterfalls which is rather handy as I quite like taking photos of them! Hope you like this one :-)
Another shot from this lovely Swaledale waterfall. I've played around with different shutter speeds and I'm still undecided as to how to portray the water flow. In some instances I like the milk like flow gained with a slower shutter speed and in others I think I prefer seeing a little more movement and detail with a faster shutter!
I guess its a matter of preference really. Anyway this is a lovely fall with a series of smaller waterfalls lower down this short valley near the hamlet of Crackpot just outside Muker. Well worth a visit if you are in the area of the Keld Waterfalls.
A throw back to a very wet and windy Autumn day up in the Dales, when I had a bit of a waterfall fest! There was so much water coming down this gorge near Askrigg, which with the strong wind meant lots of foliage movement and a sodden lens cloth. I wasn't sure if I would come away with anything worth posting given the spray and movement in the air!
This was my last stop having started the day over in Wharfedale at Cray and Crackpot, before going to West Burton and then here!
Anyway, here is a shot I managed to salvage from the waterspots and spray. You can see how windy it was with some of the tree and leaf movement in the upper frame, and also how wet it was with the water draining from the banks of the gorge. This is a lovely waterfall and well worth the long walk up the gorge and woodland from the village.
Crackpot - a village in Swaledale.
Crackpot Cave is nearby in Scurvey Scar and can be reached via Kneewrecker Passage.
Sadly, we'd lost one of our trio, so it was left to Brian and I to talk nonsense for a couple of hours and take a few photos.....
Last week a mate and I spent the day photographing in and around Swaledale, in the Yorkshire Dales.
We visited a couple of locations in the morning, ending up here, at Crackpot Hall, for sunset. We’d also stopped off at Kidson Force on our hike up.
In hindsight, we probably shouldn’t have spent as much time as we did at the waterfall, as the excellent light, which had been teasing us as we walked up to the ruins, didn’t last long after our arrival.
I shot separately for the sky and land, blending them later in Photoshop.
*** Featured in Explore 14th February 2025, many thanks to all 🙏 ***
A thundery wet gloomy day at home, so I thought "waterfalls"!
I set off for Swaledale to take a look at Crackpot Falls near Muker. I travelled through atrocious road conditions, with flash floods and driving rain. It was dull and murky, which bode well for waterfall work! That is until I actually drove over the tops to Swaledale, when it became a bright June summers day!
Anyway, a nice trek with my kit up this little valley and I arrived at Crackpot. This is a lovely waterfall, which is easy to view from above from the footpath (my previous post of this). However, to get down to where I took this shot is pretty tricky with steep slippery slopes. There are some lovely moss covered rocks as well, which provide some nice foreground interest (next post!). But I quite liked this with the light shafts hitting the falls. Whilst it was quite bright the little gorge here provides just enough shade for this type of shot!
Crackpot Falls, Swaledale Yorkshire. Bit slippy angling the camera on the rocks - no tripod, other half using it!
One of the best parts of living rural is that crackpots can and do indulge their fantasies on big rural properties. I can only infer that this guy likes standalone doors.
For FLICKR door fans:
“A very little key will open a very heavy door.” – Charles Dickens
“When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.” – Jesse Jackson
Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow