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.

The Waiting Game
Cullen, Scotland
2015

The Same, Only Different
Portsoy, Scotland
2015

On a walk this morning (they don’t “hike” in the UK, they “walk”) I was struck by how similar the view in front of me was to walking back in the U.S. I might see this same kind of view in parts of Montana, and certainly back in Kansas where I grew up. But of course a single photo doesn’t tell the whole story of the landscape. In Montana there would probably be a view a a mountain range behind me. In Kansas there would be a view behind me of, well, the same thing as in front of me. Here outside of Portsoy, about 150 feet to the right of me the terrain dropped off a cliff into crashing ocean waves. And a couple of miles down the track I was here:

Sandsend, Scotland
2015