Wedding Photographer Derbyshire — Chatsworth, the Peak District, the Dovedale Gorge and the Derwent Valley
Derbyshire is England's most scenically diverse inland county — a landscape that encompasses the limestone White Peak's river dale gorges in the south (Dovedale, the Manifold valley, Lathkill Dale, Monsal Dale), the gritstone Dark Peak's moorland and the Derwent valley's great houses in the north, and the industrial heritage of the world's first mechanically powered cotton mills in the Derwent Heritage Corridor at Matlock Bath, Cromford and Belper. For Derbyshire wedding photography, this geographical diversity means that every wedding day in the county is within thirty minutes' drive of a landscape portrait setting of national quality: from Chatsworth's Capability Brown park to the gritstone Stanage Edge above Hope Valley and the limestone stepping stones of Dovedale.
The White Peak: Dovedale, Monsal Dale and the Limestone Dales
Dovedale — the National Trust gorge of the River Dove below Thorpe, with the stepping stones, the Twelve Apostles limestone pinnacles and the Lover's Leap promontory above the gorge — is the most visited scenic gorge in the Peak District and provides a portrait setting of Romantic-period natural sublimity: the limestone crags above, the clear river between the stepping stones and the dense ash woodland of the gorge sides create deeply theatrical portrait compositions of natural grandeur. Monsal Dale — the Wye gorge above Bakewell with the Victorian railway viaduct arching above the dale floor and Fin Cop's limestone spur above — provides a portrait setting of exceptional industrial-pastoral contrast. Lathkill Dale's crystal-clear spring-fed stream and its lead-mine ruins provide the most ecologically extraordinary landscape in the White Peak.
The Dark Peak: Stanage Edge, the Derwent Reservoirs and Kinder Scout
Stanage Edge — the three-mile gritstone escarpment above Hathersage, the longest continuous gritstone edge in the Peak District and the setting of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (the Moor House moors) — provides portrait settings of dramatic Dark Peak moorland character: the individual gritstone boulders on the plateau edge, the heather-covered moorland behind and the Hope Valley visible 200 metres below the crag provide portrait composites of raw northern landscape power. The Derwent Reservoirs — Ladybower, Derwent and Howden in the upper Derwent valley, built 1902–43 and famous as the Dambusters' training ground — provide high reservoir landscape portrait settings of dark water, conifer plantation sides and the wide purple moorland horizons above in a setting of extraordinary northern upland grandeur.