Quite often when I’m going out to take some photographs with my friend Ade I’m almost willing him to phone me and tell me he’s not going to bother. I’ll look outside and it’ll be cold, wet, windy and rainy. Or even hailing. I’ll picture in my head sitting in the car in the middle of nowhere praying for a break in the weather that never comes.

Except Ade doesn’t cancel – he never does – we head out and more often than not we get lucky with some amazing spells of great light and I realise that if we’d cancelled we’d have missed some great shots. Ade really has a gift for getting lucky with photography conditions.

So last Sunday I was in a similar mood, it had been raining and sleeting on and off all morning and as soon as we left my house in his car the weather took a turn for the worse. When we arrived at our destination we had to sit in the car for 20 minutes while it lashed it down! When it stopped we headed to Goredale Scar and were treated to some fantastic light, as you can see below:

We then carried on to Malham Tarn and the weather was looking even more grim than before. If I was on my own I’d have just driven home but luckily Ade never gives up, and the sun briefly broke out letting me take the following picture, which in my opinion is the best photo I’ve taken so far (although not a patch on Ade’s work):

I’m going to print this one out 20″ x 30″ and put it on my wall at home. Like most photos it looks much better printed out than it does on a computer screen and I reckon it’ll look great poster sized. The detail on the full-sized picture is really quite impressive and shows what you can do with a not-exactly-high-end digital camera like mine.

It just goes to show that persistence pays off and a day spent in the cold and wet countryside is well worth it when you get something you can put on your wall like this. And having a friend who’s not only the source of all my knowledge of photography but has the persistence and determination of a fanatic is pretty useful too!