Three views of the beach at Crail, Fife – a study in the shapes of rocks and stones.
Category Archives: water
Crail: colour
Three views of the beach at Crail – for the geologists, the rock is old red Devonian sandstone. For everyone else, the seaweed is slippery and the water is wet.
Crail Harbour Rocks: then and now
Quite a few years ago, I had just acquired a large-format view-camera (a Shen-Hao); for a first excursion, I took it to Crail in Fife and made an interesting study of the boulders submerged at the water’s edge on the beach.
Fast-forward five years, and I returned to the same beach in Crail with a little Sony NEX-7 camera and retook the same image-brief:
- Crail
- closeup
- water and rocks
- multiple superimposed exposures
The differences a few yards, a few years, and a different day can make! Enough, perhaps, to justify titling the new image “Crail Harbour Rocks (2)”.
That Tree: Millarrochy Oak
“Make Photo Here” – another total photographic cliché, but I figured it had to be done. The Milarrochy Oak on the shores of Loch Lomond.
What the photos don’t show you is that the tree is barely three yards from the edge of the carpark and, with a pleasant sunset behind it, there were four other photographers lined-up along the strip of beach.
It has the advantage of just being in the Highlands: the caravan-site at Milarrochy Bay is definitely north of the Highland Boundary Fault, on psammite and semi-pelite; while the oak tree itself is in a local igneous intrusion surrounded by sandstone conglomerate.
Obligatory Zig-Zag
I remember when I first saw a contact of mine on Flickr produce a photo of this scene, quite a few years ago now – and it’s become quite the cliché since.
So, take your pick: wide-angle 16:9 or 5:4 aspect ratio similar to large-format? Black and white or colour (not so often used in longer exposures)?
Me, I liked the light – cool shades of dusk on one side of the concrete break-water, remains of a sunny afternoon on the other.
Winter on the South Inch
It’s my favourite time of the year. Admittedly the snow, slush and ice on the pavements makes strolling a little difficult, but that’s OK – white stuff in strange light is just wonderful.