Project 28 - Intimate Landscape

I recently went to Marsden Moor Yorkshire to a photographic day organised by the National Trust. The moor is over 5000 acres of moorland to which the public have access although on this occasion we were accompanied by a National Trust volunteer and a landscape photographer. I took a large number of general shots although distant areas were covered in a haze that had a mixed effect upon the photography - in some cases it added to the sense of space and distance whilst in others it obscured detail that would have added to the overall image.

For this project I looked for shots that gave a sense of the moor whilst being only a very small part of it.

This first image is typical of the lower slopes of the moor showing evidence of the effect of man upon the landscape. I selected the image because of the 'terracing' and the stone wall set against the trees that show evidence of the bleak nature of the moor.

The key element in this image is the stone bridge. The line of the path across the image draws the eye towards and gives some sense of scale. I did consider zooming in on the bridge to make it very much the dominant feature but I found that this took it out of context so I left in the area of moor surrounding it. Looking at it in the blog I wonder whether it would have not been better to crop the image to exclude the sky to give the following result.

I think on balance I prefer the first image although the second 'cropped' image has the merit that the bridge is placed roughly on the crossing of the vertical and horizontal 'thirds' line that gives balance to the image.

The moor has been worked for its stone for many centuries. The choice of this image was to show that nature works  to reclaim the land taken. 

and yet parts remain as man left them with the warning notices keeping people away from the things they have come to enjoy:

As I was writing this blog it struck me that the images lacked the presence of people and so scale was difficult to decide. I had not realised this when I was taking the images and often took steps to keep people out of the image (there were 26 others in the party). I do have a few where I included people such as:

that illustrate the point. For me there is a danger in thinking about the landscape as unpeopled whereas in the right context they can add a great deal of information about scale and the environment.