“Soft Light, Ellery Lake” — Ellery Lake in early morning soft light.
This spot and this view have long intrigued me. The lines and curves lead from the shoreline forest at left, past that talus-covered slope on the right, across the water to another peninsula, and finally to the massive face rising beyond. The personality of this view can change remarkably — I’ve photographed during storms, under the full moon, in direct sunlight.
“A Doorway” — Decorated doorway in a stone building, Aberdeen, Scotland.
For some reason I can’t quite define, doors seem to be a popular photographic subject. Perhaps it is curiosity about what lies behind them — both the prospect of something being hidden and the notion of leaving one space and entering another. I often photograph them without quite knowing why, only intuiting that they appeal to me. Here I liked the contrast between the cold and angular nature of the stone structure and the the organic forms painted on the doorway.
“A Cotswolds Trail” — Two Cotswolds hikers pause in the sunlight between old trees and a wheat field.
I have to confess some (OK, a lot of) ignorance about England outside of its cities. We’ve been to the country a number of times, but that usually means going to London and then visiting a few other relatively urbanized places. So “my England” has been basically London and a few (mostly popular) towns. We’ve passed through the country on trains and looked down on it from the air, but this trip was the first time that we actually went out and walked through it. I learned a lot!
“Windblown Trees at Loch Stack” — Two windswept trees backed by Loch Stack and Scottish highlands mountains.
The last few days of our drive around northwest Scotland followed an indirect route. After more or less tracing the North Coast 500 route from Skye toward Durness, our plans had us making a longish detour to the historic lodge at Altnaharra. This meant leaving the NC500 and heading south into the highlands on less-traveled roads. I made this photograph along the detour late in the day.