The Artful Engineer

My second full day in Yorkshire was sunny with some scattered clouds—an all-around nice day for photography, although the light was a little harsher than I would like for waterfalls. I have quite a few images of the River Ure from the vicinity of Aysgarth Falls, but decided to include this one because the shape of the rocks are so striking and they echo the patterns of the dry stone walls in many of the day’s images, like this next one:

I really like the five sheep in the foreground area. I got rid of a couple more—one half in the frame, two more against a dark wall—to clean things up a little. But what makes this image is being on the shadowed side of the walls: they show up dark and bold against the bright green grass. It is also nice that the sun is high enough that it is not casting long shadows across the grass; the result is that the walls are crisp.

Despite being somewhat busier, this next image still feels more peaceful than the last. The strong dark diagonals throughout the frame in the previous image give it a lot of energy, whereas this one is more about layers. The trees probably assist the sense of calm, too.

Today’s third image featuring barns and walls was actually taken only five minutes before the previous one. I was standing in almost the exact same spot; the only real difference was looking northeast instead of northwest. The warm light on this side of the walls gives a very different look to this image. Obviously the star of the show here is the barn in the lower right that not-so-subtly is at the end of the long leading line of the wall. The high contrast between the shadowed side of the barn (and its dark roof) and the lit side of the barn and the wall also really draw the eye. I also enjoy the way the parallel lines of walls disappear up the undulating slope towards the top left corner. The hill with the clump of trees is nice, too, but is a more subtle detail here because there is limited contrast between the trees and the slope behind it.

Moving away from the pastoral scenes, here is a little reflection study from a small creek. The water almost looks like a molten green, if there is such a thing, and the little dapples of gold light are a nice extra.

We’ll wrap up with an image of Charlie holding the young hedgehog that he rescued from the road:

As a preview of next week, we will still be in Yorkshire, but will be featuring things other than dry stone walls. Thank you for visiting!