The Gorgeous Yorkshire Dales

I’ve just got back from leading 2 back to back workshops in the Yorkshire Dales. What a fantastic place for photographers. Everything from dramatic gorges to waterfalls to quarries to dry stone wall and buttercup meadows. Truly, God’s County…

This is the birthplace of the Sublime in England (check out James Ward’s Gordale Scar from 1815). My recent picture of the same location is above. We even have example of the Industrial Sublime imposing on the landscape (below)…

But I think the Dales are probably more representative nowadays of the bucolic and Picturesque, certainly so in late May, early June. And it’s still deliciously beautiful, irrespective of the label…

 

 

 

Truly, God’s County….

Ah, I keep waxing lyrical about landscapes elsewhere. It’s because I’m a travel junky… But the dramatic and the sublime don’t have to be that far away. My own birth county is a great example. Yorkshire – beauty and drama, everywhere.

Conistone limestone

 

This landscape is wild and haunting. In the two hours I was at Conistone it blew a gale, hailed, rained, battered me until I was frozen. Good for clearing the mind and breathing deeply – easy to imagine Heathcliff and Cathy not far from here!

Almscliffe Crag

 

All these grykes and clints forming run off lines into the distance. A photographer’s paradise. And then the sun comes out, and it’s sublime…

Grykes and Clints

 

Truly, God’s County…