Stills

two specks

Rex - they look a lot more natural on a larger image as you can see light coming through the branches in a number of places. But, I agree, condensed and sharpened they look ugly.
 

This is an example of how, in a global media age, an picture such as this can trigger images from distant (in time and place) sources of film or photo. So it is only the green slopes of a Scottish hillside that stop this being anything from a dried up river bed in Africa or Central Asia to the remains of animal bones strewn across a plain.

Getting back to Scotland one wonders where the water is - has there been a drought? Presumably it is one of those rivers that is only sustained when there are massive run-offs of water from intense rain. The occasional algal growth hints at only occasional submersion.

The picture is strengthened by the turn to the right of the river bed to head into the wooded valley.
 

John,

If you turn around 180 degrees you'll see this:

http://www.auspiciousdragon.net/today/index.php?showimage=573

There is water running along the left bank. Enough to be a bit tricky to cross, but perfectly safe. May had been unusually dry up to this point. I can't imagine being able to cross this river very often (the path is on the left bank). But most of the width, as you observe, isn't algae covered. This watercourse is for sudden spate flows.
 

That's a Harry Tate construction and all!!
 

There's a slowness to the subtle colors and the blunted vanishing point, a slowness that's reinforced by the knowledge of how long it would take to pick my way across this rock scape. There's no need to hurry here.
 

John - and now I'm looking at a WW1 reconnaissance plane...isnt' Wikipedia a wonderful thing :-)
 

There's no need to hurry here

Interesting that you should say that. I've just been discussing the series with somebody else and we concluded that 'not hurried' was their defining characteristic.
 

There are so many variations in the rock shapes which has a similiar feel to all those variations in people in the previous picture.

This is an area that I'd like to see more of.
 

It does rather beg where the river is. They are some sizeable rocks so the absence of how they managed to reach here is unsettling. Again, the distant surrounds and colours enhance the viewing of this as does the absence of the river.
 

'we concluded that 'not hurried' was their defining characteristic.'

It may be unintuitive, but I suspect that some of that un-hurried aspect may be the lack of traditional landscape photography fussiness. This series seems abstracted from time not only on the grand scale - ie the view of the valley that you supposed was someone's daily view 2000 years ago - but also on the more prosaic scale in that these do not seem momentous in the way we have been taught that landscapes should be. As a series, they are refined without getting above themselves.
 

My first impression was that this is exactly the kind of a rock field that I usually turn my ankle on when trying to navagate;- )

The rocks are very interesting in their shape and form. Then I pick out the tree at the top edge of the rock field and find myself wanting to go there. This photograph is both calm and unsettlingly at the same time and I am unable to figure out why.
 

Seeing the title and then going to the image, my thought was that looks like a difficult walkway! Not to hurry seems advisable as turning an ankle also came to my mind.

Sort of an extraordinary ordinariness. Were there water there instead of this "sea of stones" the view would perhaps be less notable. (though I certainly like that tree)

I also like what Matt had to say.