By
Merrill Shea
Piece description from the artist
The UK countryside is crisscrossed with a spiderweb of public rights of way. And the traditional term for a hike is a "ramble". You can just make out a few ramblers to the right of the houses, and another group on the top of the cliff.
I was about to take a left-hand turn at the stone wall when I noticed this classic Yorkshire scene. For me, it's a perfect composition: the track along the stone wall, leading to a little hamlet, with a grander view further on.
The outcropping overlooking the houses is called a "scar", and the famous Ingleborough peak—a portion of which I climbed the next day—looms in the far distance.
I waited for a while as the cloud shadows scudded over the landscape until just the right combination of sunlight on the houses and clouds darkening Ingleborough came together.
While the camera and lens represented cutting edge technology at the time, they have been surpassed in terms of detail resolution for enlargements. Therefore, I would caution against enlarging more than 30×40", as the quality of detail might suffer.
Merrill Shea began his artistic career as a classical musician and then gradually migrated toward the visual arts. He has worked as a free-lance photographer in the commercial, non-profit and academic worlds throughout Eastern Massachusetts for over twenty-five years. He is entirely self-taught.
Merrill spends at least one month every year traveling primarily throughout New England and the Pacific Northwest. While his oeuvre includes urban imagery, his primary inspiration comes from the natural world. His TurningArt offerings represent a selection from his personal projects, which range from intimate and panoramic seascapes to interpreting the oldest living things on earth: the fantastically gnarled bristlecone pine trees that survive at twelve thousand feet above sea level.
Merrill continues to explore the varieties of color, graphics and texture that are possible within the photographic medium. Like many photographers, he has been influenced by the iconic black and white nature photography of Ansel Adams. In that regard, he has included identical images which he feels are effective both in color and black and white.
Merrill has always been fascinated with the medium of watercolor and has recently been exploring the possibilities of using various computer techniques to produce watercolor-like images from photographs that, in many cases, are indistinguishable from true watercolors.
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