From November to February I walked the River Calder once a week with one camera and one lens. These are twelve weeks in three pictures, and what the river taught me about winter light.
Light that lasts four hours
In December the sun barely clears the valley sides. On the clearest days it reaches the river at about ten and leaves it before two, and those four hours decide everything. I stopped planning pictures and started planning walks around that window.
The low sun does wonderful things to wet stone. Mill walls, weirs and the old towpath turn gold for twenty minutes at a time and then go flat and blue again. If you are not already standing in the right place, you miss it.
So I went back to the same places week after week. By January I knew which bend would catch the light at eleven, and which bridge would throw its shadow across the water just before one.
Rain, mostly
It rained on nine of the twelve walks. I had expected that to be a problem. It turned out to be the best thing about the project.
Rain empties the towpath and fills the river. It turns the town at dusk into a sheet of reflections: shop lights, car lights, the red glow of the chip shop on the corner. The street picture below took forty minutes in one doorway under one umbrella.
The rain also changed what I looked for. On dry days I photographed the river; on wet days I photographed people getting out of its way: a man holding a newspaper over his head, two schoolgirls sharing one coat, a dog refusing to cross a puddle.
A few simple things kept me and the camera going: a shower cap over the camera between shots, a dry cloth in every pocket and a flask of tea. Nothing else I bought made any difference.
What the river gave back
By February I had more than two thousand frames and about thirty I still like. That is a normal ratio for me, and I have stopped minding it. The walks were the point; the pictures are what they left behind.
The last walk ended above the reservoir at dusk, a place I had not visited once in twelve weeks of following the river. It felt right to end there, looking back down the valley.
If you want to try something like this, choose one place you can reach easily and go back every week at the same time. You will notice more on the tenth visit than on the first, and the small changes from week to week become the story.
