pete rowbottom

DECEMBER 2024 - 1839 AWARDS - NOMINEE AWARD / December 18, 2024 by Pete Rowbottom

I hadn’t enetered any competitions for quite a while but I got invited to submit to this one, glad I did as I’m pleased to say I was awarded with a Nominee Award, in this Years 1839 Awards Photographer of the Year in the Landscape Catagory.

November 2023 - Dinorwic Quarry Revisit / November 25, 2023 by Pete Rowbottom

Another visit to Dinorwic, this time taking in a few new locations, to be honest I thought I’d done pretty much all of it but the places continues to throw up surprises in directions that you have somehow missed before. An old truck maintenance facilty was found along with a few tunnels and a selection of rutsing away old trucks plus changes to the quarry the weather and rockfalls bring, The idea behind these visits is to put my own style and stamp on the images from this fascinating place. The customary very changeable weather was again in place and allowed for some rather dramatic images. All available as prints and to license, please use the ‘Let’s Talk’ option at the top.

Mardale Green Village revealed under Haweswater / October 14, 2021 by Pete Rowbottom

Mardale Green was a 17th-century farming village in Cumbria, it was evacuated in the 1930’s and most of the village was flattened by the Army then flooded, the area now forms what we know as Haweswater reservoir today in the Lake District. Normally, none of it can be seen but this year the water level in Haweswater has been that low (under 40% full) it has been revealed once more.

All that remains of it is a bridge, remains of an old church, a pub, and roads, the remains of which can be seen in these images, also this year the remains of large tree stumps appeared out of the water, the last time it was this visible was back some 26 years ago, in 1995.

All images ©peterowbottom2021

Aerial view of Haweswater showing the Village remains off to the left

Aerial view of the walls, that are in remarkably good condition!

©peterowbottom2021

Kosovo - Wartime Locomotive Graveyard / September 30, 2021 by Pete Rowbottom

Going back to the end of November 2019, And I find myself in the salubrious surroundings of a ‘Railway Graveyard’, in a suburb of Pristina, Kosovo. Granted, not your average holiday destination… but I don’t really do average. A very unusual place to visit, but I couldn’t miss this when in the Country, and as is usual on these types of things, it didn’t come without it’s challenges…

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started 28 February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army. (Source: Wiki)

Due to most of the Railway Rolling Stock being impounded or destroyed by the Serbs durng the war, Kosovo ended up with numerous secondhand Locomotives and Coaches from other Railways in Europe, noteably 4 Nohab Loco’s from Norway, and Passenger Cars from Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Norweigan built, donated by Swedish Railways.

A lot of these now lie broken and will never run again, parts obviously being the main issue and lack of staff to keep a full maintenance regime going, lot’s of markings from the War still remian on the loco’s, The NATO symbol and KFOR (KFOR was a NATO-led international peacekeeping force) can be seen on numerous loco’s in these images.

Now as you would imagine this is still quite a sensitive Country and walking around a live railway installation with a camera and tripod isn’t the greatest idea but I’d already decided that it was worth a look and this would maybe the only time I would get to do it (see also earlier blog post on Sarajevo). I’d done my research before travelling and I had a pretty good idea of where it was, after getting a taxi out of town and being dropped off in the middle of a random housing estate we quickly found the railway lines and worked out where everything was, the easiest route to it seemed to be by just folowing the railway lines, whilst you could never do in Britain it isn’t a problem at all over here as every man and his dog just walks along the lines to get where they are going. Once at the Railway Depot the intention was to go and ask someone if it was OK if we took some pictures, explain we were from the UK and no threat to anyone, problem was there wasn’t a soul in any building, there was a loco running in one of the sheds but nobody about at all apart from one guy who appeared to be fixing a roof.

Luckily he spoke a little English and we managed to find out he didn’t actually work on the Railway and was just doing some odd jobs about the place, with this in mind I decided to just go and find the scrapyard area and get busy, I wasn’t getting this far and giving up on it.

A good hour or so was had photographing the old scrap Loco’s and exploring the lines of ex Yugoslavian vehicles, lots of which were adorned with all the war markings, we decided to head over to another shed where there appeared to be even more stuff hidden away, as we did a scruffy looking man just appeared out of nowhere and beckoned us to come over, he didn’t speak of word of English but the general jist of it was that we definitely shouldn’t be there and needed to leave immediately. My mate was more than willing to just leave but I still hadn’t finished and wanted to see the other bits so I got the roof repair guy to help us translate with this other ‘Security’ guy. To cut a long story short he was saying we needed permission off the Railways to be there and would need to leave so I said to the roof man here show him this, and handed him a railway pass for the neighbouring Country of Macedonia, he looked at it for a few moments, (obviously no idea what it was apart from the distinct railway logo stamped on it) and then declared that he was sorry he had asked us to leave and that we were now welcome to stay, furthermore he would show us around the place!! If you don’t try you don’t get….! another 30 mins or so were spent looking around different areas, and getting pics before we bid our new friend a good day and walked off back down the line to the deserted and seemingly forgotten station (pics below) to catch one of the only trains of the day back into Pristina.

Well hidden away, Ex Swedish Railways, this was thought to have been scrapped many years ago

Pre war ‘Yugoslavian Railways’ logo

Original Builders plate from Canada,1980

Often the only way to get onto the next line was to climb through gaps like these.

NATO & KFOR logo’s

All images ©PeteRowbottom2019 - not be used or reproduced without permission.

The Winter of Discontent.... Making the best of it. / January 27, 2021 by Pete Rowbottom

Over 4 months since the my last blog post and in that time I’ve managed to get out just once briefly (to the Lake District) with friends for the day while we were allowed and apart from that hardly at all with the camera with any real sense of purpose.

Living in Wigan doesn’t by default provide me with many local options for Landscape Photography, at least not the sort I like anway. But, when you don’t have a choice (due to Covid Lockdown) you can either not do any at all or start to really try hard to look around and shoot something local.

A couple of times lately the weather conditions have been suitably dramatic (including a very rare cloud inversion) so some local scenes which would normally be quite ‘average’ suddenly became far more interesting, and very photogenic. I found myself actively scouting local locations more and making a list of what weather would suit them best, so that if it did happen I would be ready to go out and have a spot in mind instead of aimlessly driving around looking for something.

I guess the one and only reason I’ve never done this before is because quite simply, I didn’t have to, I’m an hour away from some great locations in all different directions and I taken for granted that I’d never have that option of going to them removed by something like this. I’ve found an abandoned railway viaduct just 5 minutes drive and a short walk from my house that has the most amazing icicles growing on trees underneath it in freezing weather, a great spot suited to macro work, various new footpaths and routes that lens themselves well to Winter Photography, and a location that’s great for Winter sunsets. If you’re anything like me and you’re getting extremely frustrated by the current situation, and maybe you too live in a mostly urban area, don’t give up, just try and get out and find new things, the chances are very high that you will, and even if you don’t get the weather you need on that visit you can be confident that when you do, you know exactly where to go.

Here are a few of the images taken locally during lockdown, shot on both Nikon D850 and Phantom 4 Drone.

You never know what’s all around you until you look a bit harder… Hope to see you all back out there soon…

Pete

Ambassador for NiSi and Fotopro UK / June 4, 2019 by Pete Rowbottom

Really pleased to announce that from today I will be a UK brand ambassador for NiSi Filters, and also a UK ambassador for Fotopro tripods, many thanks to Mark Andreas Jones for inviting me to be part of the team, really looking forward to working with you.

Here’s the link to the webpage - https://www.markandreasjones.com/copy-of-pete-rowbottom-ambassador

Here's an image I took using the Fotopro TL-64CL,LG-7R ball head. And Nisi S5 150mm system in Iceland.

Nikon D810 14-24 f/2.8, Nisi S5 150mm system, Fotopro TL-64CL,LG-7R ball head

Dinorwic Slate Quarry, Snowdonia / May 10, 2019 by Pete Rowbottom

This one has been a while coming… I’ve wanted to visit all the buildings here for quite some time and on my last 2 visits I spent that much time taking pictures and generally exploring a smaller area of the quarry that the main bits that I wanted to visit I didn’t get to, (also because I couldn’t find them, or at least a way to get to them)

Opportunity arose for a 3 day visit to the area for Landscape Photography and again I planned another visit to the quarry, this time armed with a fantastic few pages of information provided to me by Mike Innes on FlickR, a regular explorer of Dinorwic and very helpful guy - https://www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/

For anyone who has been you’ll know the vast nature of the place, for anyone who hasn’t, basically it is enormous. To put the place into perspective, when it was open It was the second largest slate quarry in Wales, and indeed in the world. It remains the same size but closed down and abandoned. It closed in December 1969 after a downturn in demand for slate, ever since it has been sat dormant, deteriorating year after year, there have been a lot of collapses but there is still a lot to see.

The main purpose of the latest visit was to find the old cutting sheds on the ‘Australia’ levels, the other buildings still fitted out with heavy machinery, and the ‘Caban’ (or Cabin) which still contains the Miners’ old work boots and clothes. I managed to finally find all these on what turned out to be a 6 1/2 hour circular walk, some very hard going but well worth it.

It’s a true photographers paradise, with great compositions to be found literally everywhere around the site, it also has the added bonus of looking great in poor weather, when low cloud and mist can often feature, and the wet slate takes on new colour and drama.

The images are from a number of visits, if you want any further info get in touch.

Old cable winding drums under the rails here

Product test: K+F Concept 1-5 stop adjustable ND filter / May 9, 2019 by Pete Rowbottom

I’m a big fan of using filters and find them indispensable for my type of photography, slide in ND filters, ND Grads, Polariser, the list goes on, quite often when I go out I’ll have a bag full of filters and sometimes even 2 systems to cover a super wide lens.

However one thing I have never used (until now) is an adjustable screw in filter, they don’t tend to get very good press and for someone like me who uses a dedicated slide in filter system they really aren’t going to be much use, or so I thought….

K+F Concept asked me if I would be interested in trying out their new 1-5 stop adjustable screw in filter to see what I thought of it, I must point out that I’m not affiliated to or employed by K+F in any way, and as such agreed to give an honest an unbiased view.

The first thing that strikes you about this product when it arrives it that is really does seem to be good quality, well packed in a stylish box, and it comes with a great sealed and padded hard protective case that will take some abuse outdoors, the filter itself seems very well made and the rotating movement of the outer element is extremely smooth and easy to use.

As with anything the proof is in the testing and I took it out on 2 recent trips with me to North Wales, and The Lake District.

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Actual Usage

A big issue with variable filters can be a dark ‘X’ mark evident in images where the the polarised light is at opposite ends of the filter, K+F say that is not the case with this filter and indeed it is a direct selling point on the website. In the images I took I found this to be the case, no signs whatsoever of any X (or other mark) from minimum filtration right through to maximum.

The other issues normally you could expect with many screw in filters is vignetting (darkening of the edges of the frame) on wide angle lenses, this is a very slim filter but even so I wanted to see how it performed on the Nikon 16-35mm lens on a full frame camera, 16mm on full frame is really the widest you will be able to go without requiring specialist equipment to mount any kind of filters to your lens, again the filter performed admirably with no vignetting at all - very useful and another box ticked.

Although they have many uses, as a mainly outdoor photographer, for me, ND filters in the range of 1 to 5 stops have 1 main use, water movement. This is where this filter comes into it’s own and I found it great to use, ideally with moving water where I want to show movement (but retain detail in the water) I will be looking for an exposure time of around 0.8 - 2 seconds, any longer and I would be looking for a 6-10 stop filter. The beauty of this filter is that you can easily compose your shot with the filter in place, focus with the filter in place, then simply turn it until you get your desired shutter speed, should you need to change your shutter speed for different effects in the water there’s no need to mess around removing filters and trying other ones - it’s simply a small turn of the filter. In fact it’s so easy there’s no reason not to take shots using different speeds to select later or even to combine for different areas of the final image where water flow may differ in the scene. With 1-5 stops you are not going to see much cloud movement in the sky at most times of day, which is why I say this filter is best suited for moving water images.

Colour - sometimes with ND filters you will get a colour cast to the images, I didn’t have a problem with this one at all, if anything there was maybe a slight warmth but if you are shooting in RAW it isn’t a problem anyway and so easy to correct, however I didn’t feel the need do any correction.

Conclusion and thoughts

I think this is a great little bit of kit, and I say little as that’s exactly where it’s strength is, even in the filter case it’s so easy to just slip into your jacket pocket, I often shoot in the middle of rivers or streams and going back and forward to the riverbank if you need to change filters can be troublesome, as can applying or changing over filters in the water, not to mention the chances of dropping and breaking them on rocky areas. With this one I can simply apply it to the camera before I take it out of the bag and that’s that done..

Another occasion in the Lakes I had a very small amount of time to capture an image I had spotted, the set up with this filter was so quick it allowed me to get the shot, something I wouldn’t have had time to do with a full filter system setup. A fellow photographer who was in the Lakes with me also had a variable ND with him which he uses on his vlogging video camera, we compared the 2 filters side by side and it was clear that this one was far better.

There will be times where this filter isn’t suitable for images I’m taking, for instance where I want to combine or ‘stack’ filters like a polariser and ND grads as this will start to introduce vignetting, but that’s not a problem as I don’t see it as a replacement for my other filters, but I do see it as a great solution where I need a travel filter, where I’m walking long distances and need to travel very light, and as mentioned before where I have very limited time and need a super quick setup, I honestly can’t fault it, and for the price ( around £50) it will be a great addition to anyone’s camera bag (or indeed pocket), no matter if you are a beginner or a seasoned photographer. Would I buy one ? - Yes, anything that meets my needs and adds to my flexibility, while also saving me weight on longer trips is a no bainer.

A link to the filter on the website can be found below, it comes in various filter sizes, if you are buying one, my tip would be to buy the one with the diameter of your biggest lens, you can always buy step down rings for other lenses but you can’t use a smaller filter on bigger diameter lenses.

https://www.kentfaith.com/82mm-filters/KF01.1064_82mm-nd2-nd32-variable-nd-filter-18-layer-multi-coated-glass

I’ve included a few images I’ve shot using this filter, images taken using the Nikon D810 & Nikon 16-35mm F/4 lens.

Abandoned 1984 Winter Olympics Bobsleigh track, Sarajevo, Bosnia / March 31, 2019 by Pete Rowbottom

In 2015 myself and a mate of mine traveled to Slovenia to watch England play Slovenia in an international football match (well he did, I was there for the travel mainly), to make things more interesting we flew to Split in Croatia, and from there made our way into Bosnia, before heading from there to Zagreb and across to Ljubljana. Part of the trip was one place I was really looking forward to visiting, Sarajevo. A city that has seen so much bloodshed, destruction, and unbelievable atrocity as recently as 1996, when the siege finally ended.

Sarajevo is a great city, steeped in history and a real mix of cultures, making for a great visit. While we were there we learned that the sites of the 1984 Winter Olympics were still in place and had been left abandoned on Trebević mountain overlooking the city, this for me was something that really flicked my switch and simply had to go and see before we left, so the next day we set off to try and get there.

Numerous taxi’s point blank refused to take us there, we didn’t know why… eventually we found one guy who agreed and we set off, half way up into the mountains he stopped and removed the ‘taxi’ sign off the roof, saying “no taxis here” or words to that effect, he eventually dropped us off in a small empty car park, overlooked by what appeared to be a completely burnt out hotel complex, we paid him, and before he made his rather swift exit, he pointed us toward a small road heading into the forest.

The weather was great, we were high up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, and there wasn’t another soul around, as we walked down the track signs started to appear on trees, we couldn’t read any of them, they appeared to be warnings and we just presumed they were to do with forest fires… shortly afterwards we saw the Olympic rings painted onto the road and looking up we could see the first curve of the abandoned bobsleigh track above us.

Climbing up onto it wasn’t hard and were soon exploring away, we walked to the very top where the old viewing stands were still in place, albeit covered in moss and trees, from there we made our way down the 30 year old concrete track, along the way there were strange ‘holes’ in the high walls of the track, obviously man made but for what purpose we didn’t know, (we would find out a day later)

At this point I must stress that we really had not researched this outing and it was a pretty much spur of the moment decision to do the night before, looking back it was incredibly stupid given what had happened here.. as we neared the bottom of the track we realised that we were still really high into the mountains, the city just a distant feature a good way away, we somehow thought the track would just lead us right back to the city… at the bottom of the track there was the finish line bridge with all the old lettering on it, we took turns at climbing up onto it, again amazed that there was nobody around… amazed that was until we walked just a little further on to the physical end to the track, where we found a concrete pill box and absolutely loads of yellow tape everywhere with the wording ‘POZOR / MINES’, yes, we were in the middle of an uncleared minefield, the Serbs had land mined the area before they left .

As you can imagine this revelation put a different stint on the visit, we were still miles out of the City and no concrete track to take us to our destination, instead there was just an old vehicle track heading downwards with bombed out houses either side, all riddled with bullet holes.. as far as I could see it there were 2 options, walk back up the track and somehow try to call another taxi (if there was signal and we could somehow find a number) or we just cracked on and walked down the vehicle track, walking in where vehicles had been and not in the grassy central area. We chose the latter option as there was certainly no guarantee anyone would come for us given the reluctance of most drivers to actually take us up there in the first place. As we made our way down I was taking pictures of the buildings in a real war torn state, there were some great images to be had but there was no way we could even consider leaving the track we were on so everything had to be shot from a distance, my mate seemed quite amazed I wanted to still take photographs, my reasoning being that if we got blown up it wouldn’t matter anyway, and if we got out OK then I would have the images.

To cut a long story a little shorter after an hour or more we eventually came into a better stretch of road and shortly afterwards some inhabited houses which was a great relief, a guy washing his carpets in the street spoke to us and after realising we were English was really friendly and offered us a drink, we thanked him but we just wanted to get out of there and pressed onward to the city.

Eating our lunch of Kofta kebabs in the city a while later was a great moment and a time to reflect on something that could easily have gone a different way, I think we both learned a lot that day. We later found out that the holes in the walls of the track were made by snipers, used to pick off unsuspecting members of the public, trapped by the siege, just horrific.

Locals look on at the war torn buildings

Travelling light, all images from this trip were shot handheld on the mirror-less Fuji X100S with wide angle adaptor, and LEE 100 x 150 mm filters.

A set of images from the trip can be seen in the gallery on the right hand side of the blog page.

Creating Award Winning Images with depth - Click + to view the images Large