when a landscape location goes sour

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I don’t know how to tag some of these photos: on the one hand, a place that’s been a good walk in the trees for over a decade, but on the other, one that’s now showing the tarnish of human influence. Landscape photographer’s idyll or sad anger?

The Falls of Bruar present several well-known scenes. My own story is of having bought a tripod to do justice to a particular view and then using it to shoot a “hole in the ground in failed light” instead, thus getting one of my most-popular photos on flickr. I’ve been back probably 10 times over more years and enjoyed the stroll up the side of the gorge, admired the rocks, watched the three waterfalls doing their thing.

First there’s the regular cliché photo approaching the lower bridge – everyone gets the view from the top of the gorge opposite the lower bridge; I flew the drone down into the gorge and shot it from more on a level with the natural arch:

Nice rocks – psammite and semi-pelite as most of the Highlands, with the shear strata arising from the end of the Loch Tay fault-line.

Around the corner, there’s a viewpoint amongst the rocks of the second waterfall above the lower bridge:

Rising above the gorge one can see the pine trees lining the Bruar Water – it also shows how the middle cascades extend much further upstream than might be expected from the compressed perspective of ground level:

Abstract view of the lower Falls of Bruar

However, this visit was far from happy. Apart from some offensive uncouth ned muttering “hope you lose your drone” as he passed by, and the hordes of random unwelcome people thinking they were entitled to pester the dog, there are massive botanical problems: the two bridges have been closed so the path up the right side of the gorge is inaccessible due to tree works – possibly because of disease although I’m unconvinced this is the whole reason.

Bridge closed

Walking up the left side of the gorge instead, the area is infested with non-native invasive rhododendron bushes; the Forestry on the adjacent hillsides has been harvested leaving a horrendous unsightly barren landscape; the burns and tributaries beside the path are in a dire state of disrepair also.

Who wants to walk along here?

This is the trouble with well-known landscape locations; as photographers we like the illusion of wilderness, or at least that places are natural. Bruar has become no more than an ill-kempt garden with a water-feature running through the rockery. The light and shade and calming deep greens are no more to be seen.

I’m giving it a decade to recover before revisiting.

Falls of Bruar Revisited

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With a couple of hours to spare on Sunday afternoon, I revisited the Falls of Bruar. Even  on a grotty wet day there were plenty of opportunities, around the lower bridge.

It’s at least the 8th time I’ve been there – but the geology is impressive as always with the natural arch formed by the river eroding the local rock (mostly psammite, as with much of the Highlands).

Some experiments with Live Composite mode on the Olympus Pen-F, as well as the usual (for me) high-resolution mode; everything taken using a circular polariser and ND4 filter for longer exposure times. Having made initial RAW conversions using RawTherapee, everything has been passed through LuminanceHDR to even-out the white-balance and tonemap for better image tone. (In cases where there’s only a small area of light in the frame, such as these flowing waterfalls, the Pattanaik algorithm can give interesting high-contrast results – set the gamma to about 0.3 and the frame turns mostly black with just the highlights remaining.)

Falls of Bruar: Flow

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One Saturday lunchtime several years ago, I spent a happy hour bugging the assistants in my local favourite camera shop, trying to find the ideal tripod.

Having visited the Falls of Bruar the weekend previously, I had a particular photo of the waterfalls flowing around the rocks in mind.

As usual, Manfrotto was the most recommended make. I tried to believe in them, honestly, but with no combination of legs, invertible centre-column and 3-dimensional head being sturdy enough for the camera of the time, I emerged with a Slik. (This process has been repeated with the same outcome a few times since.)

That afternoon, I went back to Bruar with my new tripod and totally failed to get the photo I wanted, but by dint of pointing the camera the other way staring down the gorge after sunset had happened and the light was fading – what’s come to be known as the blue hour – I wound up with a photo that would be my No.1 most-popular on Flickr for about 5 years.

That was “Raw“.

The first of these is “Flow”, the photo I intended to make in the first place.

Water close-ups

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A small series of closeup studies in flowing water, taken on a stroll around the Falls of Bruar.

I’ve admired the striation lines  in the psammite riverbed below the lower bridge at the Falls many times – yet every visit they’re still fascinating every time.