Category: North Yorkshire

A Monochrome Look Back at Lockdown

Browsing through my photos of five years ago, it was soon clear that they were all local views. Scenes taken during my solo Covid Lockdown wanderings exploring every local path that I knew, and some that I didn’t. We’re limited by having a river near our house, with no local bridge. So instead of having a whole circle of walks at our disposal, it’s only a semi-circle. That didn’t stop me discovering woodland I hadn’t explored, hitherto uninvestigated quarries and farmland, secret tracks near the river. I didn’t always take my camera, because I preferred being ‘in the moment’ as I tried to identify birdsong, enjoying clouds, grasses, emerging blossoms and flowers.

And just one from our village, where families got busy confecting scarecrows celebrating all the keyworkers who kept on working while we all stayed at home.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

Burgeoning Blooms at Beningbrough

Beningbrough Hall is one of our local stately homes. An English Baroque masterpiece, its real delight lies in strolling round its gardens. Let’s do that now, for Dawn‘s turn as host of Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

There are tulips …

…. and magnolias …

… and apple and pear blossom …

…. and so much else besides. But I’m keeping it simple today. I may take you back there another day.

Back in the Valley Gardens

A fortnight ago, I took you to Harrogate’s Valley Gardens to view a few benches. This week, I found myself there again, sharing its delights with a friend from London. One of the benches I featured last time was vacant when we passed it, so I had a bit of fun with the shadows playing over the area.

For Jude’s Bench Challenge.

From Marfield to Masham

Sunday afternoon. Sunny, warm, breezy. Just the time for a bike ride (‘im Indoors) or a solo walk (me). Marfield Wetlands suited us both as a starting point, though we went our separate ways after that. These reclaimed gravel pits, scattered with ponds, just by the River Ure are at their busiest in the autumn and winter months as a stopping off point for migrating water birds. Less variety here just now. But blue skies, blue waters greeted me: plenty of geese – Greylag, Canada and Barnacle, the odd cormorant and swan, and beyond, oystercatchers hectoring me from above, and more tuneful skylarks.

A walk along a brookside, then farmland with drystone walls.

Here are young cattle; sheep with their now-skittish lambs.

Primroses, celandines, willow catkins dusted with yellow pollen, blackthorn blossom.

Turn right through a field of cows, and reach the river banks, high above the river itself at first.

Right again, through pastureland with characterful trees, woodland, always with the river, sometimes still, sometimes chattering and clattering its way over its stony pathway.

Touch into the edge of Masham, then more fields with open views and here I am. back at Marland Wetlands again. Only four miles, but enough to send me home refreshed and content.

For Ann-Christine (Leya)’s Lens-Artists Challenge #343 – Seen on my Last Outing

And Jo’s Monday Walk.

Brimham Rocks: a Wild Place, Once the Haunt of Druids

I have posted several times about Brimham Rocks – mainly about its function as a challenging and wonderful playground for the grandchildren. The other day, however, I went on my own, to explore its history.

In Victorian times, it was believed that the Druids were reponsible for carving many of the fantastical shapes dominating the landscape.

They weren’t. Blame geology instead. About 320 million years ago, this corner of the planet was dominated by an immense river, splitting into many deltas spilling over the land here, often changing course. As it travelled, it deposited layers and layers of sand and grit which over the millenia formed layers of rock we now call millstone grit. The area was eroded by water, by wind sand-blasting the rocks, by earth movements: and by the Ice Age, when – more than 10, 000 years ago – slow-moving glaciers sculpted and moved the rocks.

It’s easy to see the layers of sediment here which formed the millstone grit.

Earthquakes, millenia ago liquefied the rock, forcing boiling water upwards through the layers that had been laid down. You can see that phenomenon here.

There’s one particular rock, known as The Idol (because the Druids must have carved it!) Just look:

Can you see how this inmmense rock , all 200 tons of it, is supported on the tiniest of pillars? It’s quite safe – for now.

And here’s an oak tree in direct competition with another rock. It continues to grow and thrive, somehow, with a rock that declines to split any further and give it extra growing room.

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that Brimham Rocks is the wildest place I know, and therefore a suitable candidate for Egidio’s Wild Lens-Artists Challenge

Three – No Four – Vikings I Met Last Month

For this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Ritva has chosen to focus on portraits. Difficult. Because it IS difficult, and many of the few I do take are of family, whom I don’t usually feature on my blog. There are the images I secretly take whilst out and about, but few of those quite measure up as portraits so much as someone-doing-something-or-just-walking.

Then I remembered York Viking Festival, which I recently featured on one of my posts. So back we go, to a day when photography was not only permitted, but encouraged.

Tips on how to bump off your enemy, Viking style.

Tips on throwing a clay pot, Viking style.

Tips on working in wood, Viking style.

This last set is for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness, because she invites us to take one photo, and crop it three different ways. So – two solo portraits, one two-handed portrait, all for the price of one shot of a Viking and his slave industriously working together.

Spring in Glorious Technicolor – or Muted Monochrome

Even though over the last few days the weather has reverted to winter chill with a vengeance, I think it’s definitely the week that Spring has Sprung. The daffodils have suddenly burst forth into golden glory. The grass is lusher. Dandelion and daisies crowd the verges. Spring announces itself in an explosion of colour, in contast to the muted browns and greys of winter with its dull skies and overabundance of mud.

So is there even any point in ‘doing’ spring in monochrome? I thought I’d find out, and chose four images where it’s not just spring flowers telling the story, because they’re complementing the buildings they grow near.

Perhaps these aren’t part of the story, because snowdrops show their faces from early January. But they’re white, so may not suffer so much in monochrome.
Primulas on a traffic island near York Minster.
Tulips overlooking Knaresborough Viaduct.

Part of my own difficulty is that I don’t enjoy tinkering with photos. What comes out of the camera either works, or it doesn’t, and then I’ll junk it. At most I’ll level the picture up, maybe lightly crop it, even – slightly – fiddle with brightness. So my translations into monochrome are crude at best. If I want monochrome – and I’m increasingly choosing it over colour – I’ll shoot in black and white. And perhaps follow up with a further version in colour. I admire those photographers who use editing tools with discretion, so what we see is the original shot – just enhanced in subtle ways. I’m less keen on dramatic editing. But in a diary that is already over-full, I guess I don’t feel like giving this particular skill the time it needs to learn to do it well.

I’ll finish with Fountains Abbey as it is now, its grounds carpeted in daffodils. Black and white as my featured photo, and – my much preferred version here – in the above-mentioned Glorious Technicolor.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness