Tobermory Cat
Tobermory, Scotland
2015

I took this quick shot because I thought it was kind of funny that a cat would choose to snooze atop a car right on the main drag in Tobermory–not that it’s a particularly busy street, but it does get more traffic than any other. As it turned out, we saw it almost daily the whole week we were there. It’s also somewhat of a local celebrity and popular among tourists. The shops along the street all have postcards featuring the cat and the bookstore even had a photo book with a pretty decent collection of images of it in various poses around town.

Someone told us the cat actually belonged to the distillery down at the end of the street. I imagine it has a name other than the Tobermory cat,  but we never heard what it was.

Land, Sea, Sky
Portsoy, Scotland
2015

A minimalist landscape along the coast near Portsoy.

Roll Out the Barrel
Craigellachie, Scotland
2015

The Speyside Cooperage manufactures and refurbishes barrels and casks to supply many of the distilleries in Scotland and around the world.

Down on the Corner
Tobermory, Scotland
2015

Long shadows from the early morning sun help create an abstract composition on the corner below our apartment in Tobermory.

Bolton Priory
Bolton Abbey, England
2015

Whenever I look at photos of old ruins like these at the Bolton Priory, I think they’d look good as etchings. This was my quick attempt at creating an etching look in Photoshop.

What Goes Around Comes Around
Bolton Abbey, England
2015

This image of swirling foam below the Strid cascade on the river Wharfe near Bolton Abbey is the last I’ll post while on the road as we’ll be home tonight. There are a lot more images coming from our trip though.

Down Time
Tobermory, Scotland
2015

It seems like we’ve been constantly on the go, either in the car or on foot, this whole trip. But this image from our first week here reminds me that in fact we have found some time to just take it easy.

Fountains Abbey
Aldfield, England
2015

To a very close approximation, this is the same scene I photographed when we first visited Fountains Abbey some 12-15 years ago, so it’s not really a new image for me. Even though I like it a lot, you might wonder why I would go to all the trouble to try and recreate a photo I’ve already taken. Well, 12-15 years ago was eons in digital camera years so the technical quality of the photos I took then don’t match what I can produce now. Because of the quality issue, I can’t enlarge that earlier photo much bigger than 8″x12″ before the detail suffers too much. Yet, I like it enough to want to print a bigger version. Now I can.

Green
Malham, England
2015

The best single word to describe the countryside in the Yorkshire Dales has got to be green. Coming from arid Montana, it’s surreal to see this kind of monotonicity in the landscape, particularly in the fall.

Pastoral Morning
Carleton, England
2015

From the ruggedly beautiful coasts of Scotland, we’ve moved to the bucolic Yorkshire Dales in England. This was the view from our window just after sunrise this morning. Beyond the gate, there are chickens roaming around, laying eggs for our breakfast. In the foggy field behind, a few cows grazed along with about a dozen pheasants.