The Artful Engineer

We’ll start this week’s set of images with a few that feature limestone pavements. I talked about these a few weeks ago, too, so I won’t repeat that discussion here. For someone who has lived and photographed in the desert southwest of the US, these formations are both foreign and fascinating. They don’t have the same verticality or bold color, obviously, as places in Utah and Arizona, but their undulating intricacy is amazing. When I return to Yorkshire at some point in the future, finding and exploring more of these features is going to be a priority.

The image above involved a long slog through the spongy grasses up a gradual slope. I’m glad I expended the effort, though, because the resulting image of Ribblehead Viaduct is a lot more interesting with this foreground than without it. Given that it took me ten or fifteen minutes to get up the hill and it was going to take that long to get back down, I didn’t stay nearly as long as I wanted to out of sensitivity to the rest of the group that stayed near the van. With more time, I am certain that there’s a better composition to be had on a repeat visit!

I am not totally happy with this next image, but it does give a good illustration of what these areas look like. I will say, though, that despite how interesting they are to look at, it isn’t easy to translate them into a good photograph. A fun memory of this particular spot is that I caught a glimpse of a fox darting through the rocks. I tried to find it again, but to no avail. Clearly, hiding spots abound, so that’s not surprising. This image does exhibit one of the bugaboos of focus-stacking: wind. Every stalk of yellow grass amongst the green grasses appears as one crisp stalk and several adjacent blurry ones; I got rid of a lot of them but every time I zoom in I find more. It is an absolutely horrid cleanup job. It’s hard to tell at this size, but it would be very annoying on a large print. I suppose the saving grace with this particular image is that I don’t think it is worth being a large print. This would have been a good candidate for a tilt-shift lens, where a single exposure could have captured the entire scene in focus. There is the small problem, of course, of the fact that I do not own a mid-length tilt-shift lens (45mm would have been perfect!). Someday.

This next image takes advantage of an interesting tree and a clump of flowers to make a better composition. I have other variations that I also like of this scene, but I think it is also worth a revisit given the opportunity.

Returning to the motif of dry stone walls and fields, some kind farmer planted this picturesque row of trees for me years ago. I do wish his neighbor had refrained from planting the trees behind the one on the right, though. I suppose that I could make them disappear, but it feels over the limits of my manipulation threshold. At least it does today, especially since there is a barbed-wire fence in front of those trees that really needs to stay where it is. Regardless of those inconveniently-placed trees, I am happy with the image and also like the well-placed walls in the lower two-thirds of the image.

The next image reminds me a little—I did not say a lot—of the patchwork of fields in the Palouse in eastern Washington. (If the Palouse had dry stone walls, anyway.) Most of the fields in the Yorkshire Dales are mowed by sheep, not by machine, so rows of cut, drying grass are not the norm. Much like the Palouse, using a telephoto lens from an elevated vantage point creates compressed, graphic patterns. The nested curves are the highlight, but the two gaps in the walls provide some visual accents. The small building is nice, too, as is the little triangle in the upper right that echoes the color of the mown field.

This last image was taken in the evening after the formal tour disbanded. The foreground tree stands out against beautiful pastel purples and cool light greens. I am very fond of the tree in the background which not only breaks convention by intersecting a horizon line, it does it twice if you count the slope. It actually needs to be at that intersection to give it some prominence; and without that prominence it doesn’t balance the foreground tree. Without that balance, I think the composition fizzles out on the right hand side and it is better to crop out the steep valley, which is a shame.

Don’t believe me? Here is a version with the far tree removed:

I hope you enjoyed this week’s images and discussion. Thank you so much for visiting!