Noctilucent (“night-shining”) clouds are the highest in the atmosphere, at around 76-85km altitude. They only appear in the summer months at latitudes from 50-70º (north or south), when the sun is more than 6º below the horizon. Formed in the mesosphere at very cold temperatures from ice, dust and water vapour, their gossamer threads undulate […]
In August I called in on an old friend in Inverary for a small guided tour around the local forests with camera in hand. There was one particular photo I had in mind – ever since I first saw an old ruined barn with disused farm machinery, it was crying-out for the bokeh-panorama (aka Brenizer) technique […]
Some more tests of the Fuji X-T20 in low light conditions. Summer has the worst daytime light for photography with harsh shadows and washed-out pale tones; however I love the night sky with its permanent twilight (at this latitude) giving cobalt blue sky with hints of the sun’s warmth just below the horizon. Plus it’s […]
The intended road from Rosal due east was closed for road-works; I took an incredibly long detour all the way to the far north coast of Scotland – next stop the Faroes and Greenland – and stopped at Portskerra to make a couple of long exposure landscapes as the light faded to dusk. The coastal […]
That was 2017-06-20, that was. A beautiful blue sky with white fluffy wispy cirrus cloud catching the setting sun… …followed by a noctilucent cloud display around 1am: NLCs are the highest-flying clouds, occurring at altitudes up to 80km where the next highest type (cumulonimbus) only reaches 12km and most are lower still. Most typically they […]
It’s just a week off being the longest day, and it seems never to really get dark at night around here at the moment. Still. While that precludes shooting the aurora, instead it’s noctilucent cloud (NLC) season – just started in the past couple of days so I was very pleased to capture these last […]
I spent a happy afternoon and evening watching light turn to dusk over Edinburgh city centre from Blackford Hill.
Just to disprove the idea of deterministic landscape photography, as I was driving back from Acharn through Grandtully along Strathtay, the sky took on a most beautiful glowing cobalt-blue colour of dusk combined with the icy diamond clarity of sub-zero late autumn temperatures in the Highlands. One of those scenes where it took a little […]
Late Saturday evening, I was driving back from Argyll to Perthshire; got as far as a country lane outside Braco a few miles from home and saw this beautiful fog swirling around a copse of trees with the Ochils in the background, all in the silvery moonlight. Olympus Pen-F, Pentax 50mm f/1.7, 3 frames […]
Wonderful amazing weather last night. The thunderstorm started around midnight, resumed sparking silently but continuously in the distance from 2 to 3am and then restarted yet again around 8-9am with jubilant thundercracks and resounding booming rumbles echoing off the clouds. These photos were made around 2.30am – just the distant lightning illuminating the clouds. Epic.