Roger Fenton's ten-year career as a professional photographer established him as a master of many kinds of subjects, especially landscape. This image contains an expansive sense of breadth and atmosphere. This is achieved partly through the use of reflections and partly through aerial perspective, in which distance is evoked by a gradual softening of tone and detail.

Fenton probably made this image on his first photographic expedition through Yorkshire, in 1854. The River Wharfe was a favourite with tourists in Fenton's time. Such sights were associated with the great British Romantic poets and watercolourists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Artists like Fenton, following in their footsteps, evolved a new, photographic interpretation of familiar subjects.