Ash trees on Scout Scar. 22 November 2015 ‘It’s beautiful up there’, she called to me as she ran down off the fell. An ordinary greeting but heartfelt I could tell. Up on Scout Scar escarpment the ground beneath our feet was in darkness, a dark mass of cloud hung over us. My fingers felt the chill from the north as the light vanished. We both felt that sudden icy blast.’ I come here every day’, he said, looking west toward the fells. No need to say more. I understood. I love to come here too and we know a rare day when we see one. .
In recent months I’ve been selecting images for my new book, out late February. First, beauty. I want the book to look beautiful at a glance. Then something more. Images of flora and fauna must be sharp and colourful, nothing indistinct. Where there are landscapes I want the reader to see clearly what I was seeing.
Today, these Scout Scar images are different in kind. You may not like them. You certainly will not get them at a glance. The day was magical and I know the walkers I spoke to felt its special quality. Once that pall of darkness shrank away to leave a dome of blue the elusive magic that comes of seeing and not seeing was gone.
Today, these Scout Scar images are different in kind. You may not like them. You certainly will not get them at a glance. The day was magical and I know the walkers I spoke to felt its special quality. Once that pall of darkness shrank away to leave a dome of blue the elusive magic that comes of seeing and not seeing was gone.
What I saw through binoculars was not what my camera saw. Sometimes, a beam of light illuminated something and in the couple of seconds it took to remove the lens cap the light had moved on and what I had seen was lost. I love the skyscapes, the glimpses of intense blue, the dark ink seeping from the clouds and the icy fells mingling with them.
I was attracted by that band of gold and the foreground of deep shadow. Through binoculars, I could make out a few winter trees on the skyline, against an inky sky. And in the shadowy fell, the shadows of darker trees. Follow that blaze of bracken through the sequence and you’ll see an abrupt transition where a stone wall runs over the fell and to the right of it the vegetation changes. There’s an illusion of solitude, a sense of landscapes without people.
The Langdale Pikes show shadowy and icy beyond that deep foreground shadow. I like the dark trees outlined against a golden fell. To me, these images catch something of fairy tale. A winter’s tale, when light and darkness come together
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