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 […]
A couple of weeks ago in the middle of December, we were treated to a quick overnight blast of snow. It remains my favourite season for photography, so I staggered up Birnam Hill to fly in the late afternoon light. Landscapes: Straight-down abstracts – trees and outlines of the Birnam Burn flowing through the snow: […]
Many moons ago… the parents and I were on holiday around Caithness and having trouble finding the way to Whaligoe Steps. As his tractor turned by the end of the field, we stopped a farmer to ask directions. To southern ears, the instructions sounded memorably like “turn right at the fussky-osk”. With a little thought […]
A long time ago I wrote a python utility to interpolate frames for use in timelapse. This project was timelapse.py. Back in 2014 I ported the idea to the very-alpha-level language Julia. In recent weeks Julia released version v1.0.0, followed shortly by compatibility fixes in the Images.jl library. And so I’m pleased to announce that the […]
About 3-4 years ago, I first visited Birnam Hill. Made it around Duncan’s Hill to the south and through the woods… As I walked a path between old and new forestry, I wondered why there was a sharp drop down almost a metre to the level of the new trees. Over subsequent visits I took […]
I’ve discovered DJI GS (“groundstation”) Pro, which allows me to plot-out routes in advance with waypoints and control what happens at them, long before arriving at a location. Well, currently we’re at the stage of wondering why the camera’s pointing back the way we came when it should be looking exactly the opposite direction. Still, […]
Having visited my favoured spot overlooking the Caledonian Forest, I proceeded up the side of Am Meallan to the well-known location with a view over the lodge and along the length of Loch Affric. It’s definitely an autumn morning location: the sun rises behind you, skimming up and over the tops of mountains beyond Loch […]
One of my favourite views is the Highland Boundary Fault running through the landscape, immediately in front of me standing at Stair Bridge Viewpoint part-way up Birnam Hill. It looks particularly pleasant with light and cloud-shadows zipping over the trees too:
Just to the south of Loch Lomond beside the village of Gatocharn lies Duncryne Hill – a positively cute protrusion consisting of sandstone and conglomerate from the Emsian era early in the Devonian Period, affectionately known as The Dumpling. Having discovered it on Google Earth, thinking it might afford good views over Loch Lomond and […]
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 […]