Getting Ready

By Anthony Shaughnessy

I was pretty excited to be invited by Richard to take part in the Yorkshire Dales photography exhibition, especially when I saw the other names involved. Impostor syndrome started to kick in. Never mind, head down, do your best.

I was determined to try and get some new pictures for the show. It's quite a trek from where I live in Cumbria to the dales and the job was made harder by Richard's insistence that the work should concentrate on the traditionally recognised dales, rather than the full modern extent of the national park. That meant my easiest and closest options of the Howgills and Mallerstang would be out.

By chance I had other business that needed several trips to Settle so on each trip I did some scouting, partly using old knowledge from when I lived near Ilkley and this was my regular stomping ground. I was keen to get some new shots of at least one of the Yorkshire three peaks and I knew there would be good possibilities along the wild country on the west flank of Ingleborough. I managed to get two good shots from two of those trips, one of them a sunrise shot from a wild camping trip.

I've got quite a few good images of Swaledale, partly because of long association with Richard and partly because it's one of the easiest to get to from Cumbria. I knew I couldn't compete with Richard's all year round access so I've tried hard to select photos from other places in the dales instead. I also chose an entirely colour selection. There are at least two really nice black and white shots I took this year in Dentdale but with a fairly small number of framed pieces to show (about six for each photographer) I chose the consistency of just colour.

Getting ready for the show is quite a piece of work. Image selection, printing, mount cutting, frame making, assembly, and so on. Don't leave it until the last minute, it will always take longer than you think. So it has proved and I'm patting myself on the back for starting the printing/framing work a month in advance because I'm still not finished and now I only have a couple of weeks left.