The Artful Engineer

This week I will take a break from the dry stone walls to share (mostly) more detailed views from Yorkshire. The image above is of Cauldron Falls on Walden Beck (“beck” being a northern English term for a stream). The falls were nice, but using my crazywide-angle 9mm lens results in a completely different look here. The focus is really on the dead-center dark rock and everything else points at it: the foreground puddles (with reflections), the logs, the falls themselves, and the overhanging branches. Now that I am a month or so past my first edit of this image, I think the only thing I don’t care for is the bright blue reflection on the far right, so I’ll probably tone that down for future use of this image.

[Aside: There being no time like the present, I just went and did that in Lightroom. It was a little trickier than I expected, but it’s done.]

One nice feature of my 24-120mm lens is that it focuses quite closely. It’s not a macro lens, to be sure, but can reach a magnification ratio of 0.39, which means it can fill the frame with an area that is just over 60mm by 90mm. This next image is not as tight as that, but with a lot lenses you are always bumping into the minimum focus distance and that doesn’t happen too often with the 24-120mm. That makes images like the next two a lot easier to make.

I surprised my British companions when I commented on the “pollywogs” in the river—they were only familiar with the term “tadpole.” (But if they can call a stream a beck, I think calling a tadpole a pollywog is perfectly reasonable.) They are fun to watch, but, like a lot of animals that are very dark, not easy to take a worthwhile picture of. This is only made worse by the fact that they are underwater and you are not. In this case, silhouetting it against a bright rock works really well. The lone leaf on the right, with its bright veins of color, competes with the creature for attention. Common wisdom is to not have competing elements in a scene, but the tension here makes the image more dynamic in my mind. Overlaying the entire scene is the mottled reflections of leaves above and bits of blue sky. Overall, I think the image works well.

This next image was one of many that I made of small cascades. I like the satin finish of the water rendered by the (very) long exposure. Using the tilt on a tilt lens let me have everything in focus in one exposure; that’s nice, because focus-stacking 8-second exposures takes a long time.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you probably realize that I like the patterns of tree branches. I find the chaotic regularity of tree branches like the ones below fascinating. Whenever the branches stand out against a background, I see the potential for an image. Usually these situations involve leafless trees, but this is a case where the dark moss-covered branches contrast strongly with the bright green leaves above.

I didn’t spend much time on foot in towns and villages during this trip, so my usual predilection towards doors and windows didn’t yield many images, but I do like this one. The diamond-shaped panes in the window are an interesting feature, and the bright pink—even magenta—roses give it some festive color.

Since the preceding images could have been taken anywhere, I decided to finish up with this view across a valley. The walls aren’t prominent here, though. In fact, the scene is oddly free of the irregular patchwork fields so common in Yorkshire. The long left-right rows of trees is what gives this particular view its character. The row of trees across the bottom of the image are the key ones—standing against the brightest green field helps—and it is echoed by three separate rows in the distance. Those far rows are a different type of tree, but they still pick up the motif and unify the image.

Thanks for taking the time to follow my photographic adventures. If you missed seeing the dry stone walls this week, there’s lots more to come going forward. Stay tuned.