The Conspirators
A significant rite of passage that a landscape photographer experiences is when you realise the sun does not always have to shine to make a rewarding image. In fact many types of subject, especially close studies of form and texture, are best portrayed in softer, more balanced light. Adding sunlight, and the strident highlights that nearly always accompany it, only serves to drown out the subtleties that originally caught your eye. Gaudy light is the photographic equivalent of chocolate - it brings initial impact, a visual high, but the attraction quickly drains away, leaving the viewer searching for longer lasting detail and gentler contrast to linger over.
A parched River Swale showed its bones as I followed its mid-summer course through steep upper reaches. High level cloud had silenced the harsh afternoon sunlight and what wind there was had gradually lost its voice too. But this meant my eye was drawn by the calm water to an arrangement of three sloping rocks that only appear when the river falls this low, when it walks rather than runs down the dale. Reflection coaxed my eye upwards and the word conspiracy entered my mind as I imagined the three rocks huddled in whispered conversation, plotting. A 200mm lens on a very low tripod brought them still closer together.