“Spring Leaves” — Spring leaves, Botanical Gardens at Royal Victoria Park, Bath.
More than once I have mentioned that when we travel we like to just head off in interesting directions and wander, not sure of what we’ll see. It isn’t that we don’t view the main, iconic sites of the cities we visit — we don’t just limit ourselves to those places. Sometimes the wandering is very productive. We see places and sometimes people we’d miss in the tourist areas, and we can often find spots that are less crowded and hectic. I made this photograph in one of those places.
“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.
“Three Peaks, Rain Clouds” — Distant highlands peaks in light rain, beyond tree-covered hills.
Arriving at this spot involved one of the driving adventures that characterized much of our time in northwest Scotland. We followed a main road northward from Skye, and here we diverged to the west toward the coast. As we topped a rise we looked back and saw this spectacular scene — spots of sunlight on nearby hills, light rain falling between us and three distant tall peaks, and a dramatic, cloud-filled sky.
“Cotswolds Forest Scene” — Trees and spring undergrowth along a Cotswolds trail.
This spring, following our exploration of northwest Scotland and cities in Ireland, we made our way to the Cotswolds District of England, where we did a one week village-to-village walk. It was unusually hot on the day we arrived, but once we started walking the weather was more typically British, as in cloudy and rainy. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The cool, damp weather was generally great for walking, and most of the rain came in the form of brief, light showers. With that in mind, it is no surprise that we spent a lot of time in some very green landscapes.
