Fields run deep in golden swards
Hot summer winds blow through the corn
Ripening corn/barley, Auchterarder.
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Dunnottar Castle
Dunnottar Castle is a ruined medieval fortress located upon a rocky headland on the north-east coast of Scotland, about 2 miles south of Stonehaven. The current ruins date from the 15th and 16th centuries, but there is believed to have been fortification on the site since the Early Middle Ages.
The ruins of the castle are surrounded by steep cliffs that drop to the North Sea, 50 metres (160 ft) below. A narrow strip of land joins the headland to the mainland, with a steep path leading up to the gatehouse.
I made these photos over the course of a couple of hours after the eclipse in March, partly because I know the place well, partly because I was reminded of it by a photo in the local photo-club, and partly because I wanted to reshoot it at greater quality with newer processing techniques. It’s a pity the path down to the shore is so muddy – perhaps I should revisit either in winter or early spring instead.
For the record, the workflow for these is:
- tripod, SRB ND1000 filter, multiple frames around 8s shutter-speed at source
- RAW conversion in Photivo
- HDR panorama in Hugin + enfuse
- tonemapping in LuminanceHDR
- post-processing in darktable
- further post-processing in Gimp:
- colour toning
- film emulation (vintage, Ilford Pan-F or Rollei black and white film emulation)
- wavelet sharpening
- organization (tagging + metadata) in digiKam
- bulk resizing with ImageMagick.
Moody Eclipse Photos
I was up early on the morning of March 20th to get to Stonehaven on the coast in time for the solar eclipse.
It’s funny how there was so much discussion as to what filters one should use when shooting the sun: on the one hand, a direct view of the sun’s disc requires special Baader solar filter (approx 23 stops’ filtration); however, when I arrived to see the extent of the clouds, only conventional photographic filters were needed (a mixture of ND1000 and circular polarizer 2-stop filters). And I think the results were all the more dramatic for it, too.
The first of these photos was made using a Centon 500mm mirror lens over 20 years old – from when I bought my first film SLR (a Canon EOS500n – that dates it) It even shows sunspot N 2303 pretty clearly.
The others are with the Sony 55-210mm lens at full stretch instead.
Each image is an HDR of 3 source frames bracketed +/-1EV, converted in photivo, blended in enfuse and worked in darktable.
Glen Clunie: Landscape Vistas
I must admit to not having found the landscape in Glen Clunie particularly inspiring – good for covering distance whilst hiking but not many trees to catch one’s interest. However, the resultant photos have some merit – hopefully the convey a sense of the expansive topography of the post-glacial floodplain through which the Baddoch Burn runs.
The particularly dark photo is an experiment inspired by my twitter friend Neil Mansfield‘s work with Dark Landscapes.
As I was returning back along the glen, three dogs in the garden of the stone house started shouting and running around me; the owners invited me in and plied me with tea. Next thing you know there’s three dogs all clambering over my knee on the sofa. Highland hospitality at its best.
Glen Clunie: Landscape Details
Three photos from a pleasant afternoon’s stroll along the Baddoch Burn in Glen Clunie, just up the road from Glenshee.
Rocks can be so colourful at times, can’t they? 🙂
Around Birnam Hill
A handful of photos from a stroll up Birnam Hill near Dunkeld. It makes a great weekend afternoon stroll – past a wonderful little waterfall with views looking out over the Highland Boundary Fault.
In the Woods
It’s been a while since I made photos of closeups in the woods – and for the most part, last time around I avoided contrasty light for the purpose too. Last night, I took a single prime lens (my favourite Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 of old) and one of my favoured strolls over Craigie Hill around the golf course, seeing what there was to be seen under the trees…
Falls of Bruar: Flow
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.