Around Comrie

A few years ago I discovered a pleasant gentle walk route around the Water of Ruchill outside Comrie. Almost entirely flat, it follows a loop from the village centre through scrub woodland (ideal shade on a sunny day!) along the side of the river past fields formerly occupied by a Roman fort, down to Cultybraggan PoW camp and back along the main B-road for a bit before taking a detour along a path from a standing stone over fields into the southern end of Dalginross and back along the streets to where it started.

In the town centre, the White Kirk stands out for its architecture with prominent tower and spire. Formerly the parish church, it is now home to a community centre.

Finally, a drone overview of the whole town – to the north, Dalginross, Comrie, Melville’s Monument and Glen Lednock; to the south, the Highland Boundary Fault runs from Glen Artney in the west right along the field across the road from Cultybraggan through Cowden Loch, Mill of Fortune and Newburgh Wood.

A map of the area, courtesy of the BGS Geoindex:

Noctilucent Clouds 2021-06-05

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 50-70ยบ (north or south), when the sun is more than 6ยบ below the horizon. Formed in the mesosphere at very cold temperatures from ice, dust and water vapour, their gossamer threads undulate and shimmer in shades of electric blue.

There was a particularly decent display on Friday/Saturday morning – I nipped out and spent a happy hour making the video:

Timelapse: Sony a7r3, Sigma 14-24mm lens, SkyWatcher StarAdventurer tracking mount for rotation

Stills: Fuji X-T4, 16-80 f/4 lens

A selection of the images are available as prints, masks, cards and other products (even socks and jigsaw puzzles!) from my main website: ShinyPhoto: Noctilucent Clouds

Dunning Glen

One of my favoured local woodlands, just a few minutes’ drive from home, is Dunning Glen. Starting from the village, stroll up the road, round the corner and through the small doorway into the woods where trees and rivers play.

There are some steep bits, but plenty of the oak trees in particular have a gnarly character.

Herewith, some photos:

My favourite from this particular afternoon was this oak – some of its branches having rotted and fallen off:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

The latter is available as prints, cards, masks and other products, via my main website: there is a pleasure in the pathless woods.

Summer Evenings

Two photos from a stroll down the road on a warm summer evening

Prints of The Leader are available from my photography website, ShinyPhoto.

Evening Stroll Photos

In the words of a twitter friend of mine: A few photos made whilst walking for approximately half an hour with the dog.

Nothing special – just nice low evening light and details of the pastoral landscape around.

Loch Rannoch Sunset

A few photos from Sunday afternoon’s explorations around Loch Rannoch.

We walked through the Black Woods; whilst flying the drone near Camghouran I discovered remains of a building – a pile of stones and hints of mounds in the earth possibly in the shape of a former but’n’ben croft? – in a clearing in the forest.

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Sunset on the shore was beautiful; contrasting deep blue ominous dark blue clouds and vibrant orange sunset across the water.

Prints of some of these photos will be available through my ShinyPhoto website: photos around Loch Rannoch.

First Munro

I’ve been over 3000′ twice before now – but for one I stopped short of the summit, and for the other we took the ski-lift up, so neither really counts as Munro-bagging.

In the Christmas/New-Year holiday week, friends and I spent a happy day climbing Schiehallion – a mountain we’ve known and photographed for a long time, but actually climbing it was a first, at least for some of us.

We couldn’t have asked for better conditions: fresh but basically dry, all the way up with mist blowing around the summit.

The top third is a tricky scramble over large boulders, but the view was totally worth it – my first Munro, my first glory and Brocken Spectre all in one.

Glory and Brocken Spectre, Schiehallion. Awesome!

On the way down we paused to admire the surroundings – an interplay of light, mist, undulating lochs and landscape and more mountains.


Bring on the mountains – I have climbing to be doing ๐Ÿ™‚

Life in Shades of Green

I used to make a point of closeup nature photos, simplifying the complexity of plant structure down to a few lines, in dull light. For the first time in ages, I spent most of yesterday afternoon with just the old Helios 58mm lens attached, walking around, seeing what could be seen.
Didn’t expect ladybirds to feature at this time of year.

Winter around Rannoch

We made it up to the Rannoch area mid-afternoon in time to admire the pure calm stillness and misty distant mountain reflections on Loch Rannoch.

Beautiful simplicity: flat calm, mirror reflections on Loch Rannoch.

(Obligatory plug – the above image is now uploaded to my main fine-art / landscape website: Blue Stillness, Loch Rannoch.)

Drone photos also happened – flying around inversion layers over the Black Woods of Rannoch.

And the forest was its usual welcoming self, albeit in subdued winter mode:

Lady Mary’s Walk, Crieff

A few photos from an afternoon stroll around Lady Mary’s Walk outside Crieff, and up Laggan Hill.

River-bank shenanigins:

Along an avenue of Beech trees

And a favourite tree – always think it looks italicised, leaning at that angle.

One of my favourite trees up Laggan Hill – there’s something aesthetically pleasing about the way this old tree leans –

Craig Varr: Misty Landscape

Saturday was one of those strange days where the weather forecast changed, leaving me not particularly inspired where to go take the camera. But I carried on regardless up to Kinloch Rannoch and climbed Craig Varr. The views on the way up were pleasant: nice trees silhouetted against the sky, views along Loch Rannoch; as I reached the top of the crag, however, the mist came down reducing visibility to barely 100yd with low cloud flowing over the trees in front. 

Descending, below the cloud level, I could see clouds zipping along above Loch Rannoch like a steam-train, the mountains opposite appearing and receding in the mist.

Autumn at the Hermitage

I spent a happy several hours wandering around The Hermitage by Dunkeld over the weekend, taking in very much the end of nature’s autumn displays – tree foliage fallen and fading, the light dull overcast all afternoon (and mostly raining, at that).

First, a few conventional scenes beside the River Braan and the Black Linn waterfalls from the bridge, as one does:

From there I explored a new direction away from the river, up through the Craigvinean woods to the Pine Cone viewpoint. The weather descended – from bright sunshine strolling through the colourful larches, it turned completely dreich grey and mist arose from the trees reducing visibility to barely 50yd. Quite spooky ๐Ÿ™‚

On the way back, a particular beech tree caught my attention; with a bit of work, the 18mm prime revealed a particularly strong composition, illustrating the tree’s curving trunk. An unusual use for focus-stacking, too: it was so dark when I started the sequence, the camera was at 30s, ISO 400 even at f/2.0; by the time I finished 8 minutes layer, it was completely pitch black night.

 

 

Autumn in Glen Lyon

A few photos from a trip to Glen Lyon in autumn. An ideal route for an afternoon walk-with-Dog took in 3 distinct kinds of woodland: artificial monoculture (spruce etc, clear barren ground) (fortunately being felled with a view to replacement with native trees), some birch and oak, and (another artificial) an avenue of beech trees.

Anthropocene influence:

Very natural native flora basking in the golden light:

An avenue of beech trees looking quite spooky