Partial Lunar Eclipse 20190716

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A year or so ago there had been a drone pilots’ meet-up on the shores of Loch Leven in Kinross. Late Tuesday afternoon showed indications from TPE3D and Windy suggesting the light would be pleasant, clipping the surrounding hills around sunset. Further alerts from Twitter reminded me of a partial lunar eclipse, with optimum effect around 2235hrs; again, checking TPE3D I saw the moon would rise in the ESE beside / over Benarty Hill across Loch Leven. 

Arriving a little early, I hunted a composition: the obvious jetties by the carpark at the end of the road have locked gates, as does a track along the shore; walking further round, it’s obvious there’s scenery to be had but the path is surrounded by a 5′ hence making it incredibly frustrating to find a composition. In the end I settled for a “layby” with three concrete plinth benches, just tall enough to see over the hedge and just wide enough for the tripod legs. 

With half an hour to kill before the lighting and lunar eclipse kicked-in, I flew the drone to survey the surroundings.

 

  • Loch Leven Castle remains and Bishop’s Hill in Fife from Kinross
  • Kinross House – symmetrical formal gardens, how ghastly.

Around 10pm the moon sneaked out from behind a cloud-bank over Benarty Hill, a perfect orange-red half-jaffa-cake in the Earth’s Shadow.

The last photo of the evening is still my favourite: can’t beat a few hazy clouds diffusing the glow of the still-red moon.

A Sunday Afternoon Escape

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A few photos from an afternoon escape in August – one of my favoured routes, starting with the trek from Amulree along Glen Quaich – a moderately long stretch becoming quite a tricky road, steep with S-bends:

As always, the view from the moor along the top was awesome – particularly with ominous dark clouds – I experimented a bit with a variable-ND (crossed-circular-polariser) filter to lengthen the exposures up to 30s:

From there, descending yet more wiggly bends on the way toward Kenmore, there’s a tiny track off the road to a small carpark nestling in amongst the heather. The hillside above there affords a glorious view over the Appin of Dull – there was even a bit of light on Loch Tay looking the other way as well:

Birnam Hill: Hunting the Highland Boundary Fault

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I’ve been to Birnam Hill and Duncan’s Hill area at least six times, so it made a good testing ground for the new Pentax K-1 camera.

It wasn’t the best of days for landscape photography – a bit early in the day for what little light there was to be really photogenic – but there was a moment when the sun broke through and illuminated some birch trees on top of Duncan’s Hill most beautifully:

For some years I’ve known the Highland Boundary Fault crosses the A9 around Dunkeld/Birnam area, but never really pinpointed the exact location.

On my first visit I walked around Duncan’s Hill through Birnam Wood and Rochanroy Wood: I observed a particular lump of rock exhibiting clear strata sticking out of the hillside:

As I passed the edge of the established woodland, there was a pronounced drop of about a metre to the level of the new conifer trees to the right. And I wondered if this was a particular noted geological formation.

Highland Boundary Fault, Birnam Hill

Three paths: this one leads down the line of the Highland Boundary Fault

On more recent visits I geotagged the location and compared with the British Geological Survey’s maps to see the rock types change either side of the dip – till, changing to slate and grit and then to psammite and semipelite typical of the Highlands.

On further investigation with Google Earth, the photo on the corner of the dip is right on the line of the Highland Boundary Fault itself, running up from Rohallion Loch through the lodge, round north-east turning easterly across the A9 south of Birnam.

My photo pinpointed right on top of the Highland Boundary Fault

The previous photo pinpointed right on top of the Highland Boundary Fault

Got it! Clear confirmation. Right on the money, first time 🙂

The path continues across a pronounced dip in the landscape before continuing up the other side to Stair Bridge Viewpoint and the King’s Seat on Birnam Hill.

Of course my favourite clear pure waterfall was still running:

The path affords some excellent views back of the Highland Boundary Fault cutting across the landscape:

Highland Boundary Fault to the east of Birnam

And finally, as far up the hills as I wanted to go that day, at Stair Bridge Viewpoint I was rewarded with a clear landscape vista over Rohallion Lodge to the Lowlands to the south:

View from Stair Bridge looking over Rohallion Lodge to the Lowlands to the south

On the Way to St Fillan’s

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A few months ago now, I spent a happy Saturday afternoon driving around the countryside – visited some old haunts and refreshed memories. I had it in mind to spend some time shooting the well-known statue Still by Rob Mulholland in Loch Earn at St Fillan’s, but was more taken by the landscape en route – a little mist rising off a forest, clouds so low they obscure the outlines of the mountains.

So the majority of these photos were actually taken whilst parked in a layby off the A85. But I couldn’t possibly admit to that. 😉

Late Night Mist

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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 at 8s*8 in hi-res mode.
 
Unusually for me, there’s been quite a bit of work removing extraneous distractions such as foreground telegraph poles. But the feeling is still there 🙂

Late Night Mist

Late Night Mist

Birnam Hill

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I’m losing count of how many times I’ve been up Birnam Hill near Dunkeld, which is no bad thing.

My favourite waterfall is still running and the scenery from Stair Bridge viewpoint, overlooking the line of the Highland Boundary Fault running past Rohallion Lodge is still beautiful.

Herewith, a comparison of colour vs black-and-white renditions.

Around Glen Etive

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For the first time in several years I spent a very happy afternoon wandering around Glen Coe / mostly Glen Etive, revisiting well-known sites – Buachaille Etive Mor from the River Coupall, the head of Loch Etive and the viewpoint above Loch Tulla – the light was stunning, a good test of the Olympus Pen-F camera. I also experimented with the 7-14mm ultrawide lens – it seems the best thing to do is point it straight at the sun and enjoy the flare; composition becomes a matter of seeking strong foregrounds.

Olympus Pen-F: first excursion photos

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I’ve not wasted time before getting out and about with the new camera. I saw a photo on flickr of the sea stack at Muchalls on the Aberdeenshire coast, near Stonehaven, which prompted a visit to explore the area and drive through lots of scenery. Unfortunately the path down to the beach was too slippy and muddy, so I settled for a higher vantage-point overlooking the rocky beach.

This was taken using an Olympus 12-60mm f/2.8-f/4 four-thirds lens with adapter, circular polariser, ND4 and grad-ND4 filters.

Rocky coastline and small sea-stacks at Muchalls, Aberdeenshire

Rocky coastline and small sea-stacks at Muchalls, Aberdeenshire

I continued to drive all around the A93 loop from near Stonehaven to Banchory and Ballater – the road lined with favourable Scots pine trees. The sun set as I was passing the Muir of Dinnet. This sunset silhouette was made using my old Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens:

The real delight of the day’s drive was rattling down Glenshee in the dusk. It was -2C outside; with the light having faded, the sky was a beautiful shade of cobalt blue, against which the silvery white of the pure snow capping the mountains was simply breathtaking.

Sirius Rising over Leacann Dubh and Creag Leacach – I know it was Sirius because by the end of the combined 64-second exposure, Orion was well visible to its right.

It feels so good to be back enjoying the landscape again.

Snowy Strathearn

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The view driving south-west along the A9 just above Forteviot is quite a treat – an open expanse of Strathearn with the river and road flowing through the landscape, bounded on the south by the Ochil hills.

On a snowy winter’s day with passing sunlight, even better!

Herewith, a few photos taken in the course of a few minutes as a filthy dark cloud rolled in.

Hunting Kelpies

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Situated right beside the M9, the Kelpies are a bit of a tourist trap, but it had to be done…

Rather stupidly, I set out with intentions of making long exposure photos of the kelpies – and then found after a few miles down the road that I’d left all my filters in the other camera bag. So, f/22 was deployed, along with a lot of stacking for synthetic long exposures. In one case it took over 60 images median-blended to eliminate the humans milling around. Still, it’s probably better that way – I’m always happier when image data arises from photons than algorithms or localized manipulation.

And some of my favourite shots are from the boardwalk through the marshes on the way back to the carpark.

Cromwell’s Tree, Bridge of Earn

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I took a long scenic detour home today, stopping in Bridge of Earn to search for Cromwell’s Tree having read about it in a book.

It’s easy to find – on the road heading south-west out of town, cross the railway bridge and it’s in the immediately adjacent field to the left.

The tree looks dead, but while the top half is a mass of dead bleached white remains of branches, the bottom third has fresh growth.

It’s known as Cromwell’s Tree as it commemorates the fact that Oliver Cromwell set up cam at Bridge of Earn in 1651. There is no documented evidence proving a direct link, but the tree is old enough to have been present in the 17th Century.

While I was there I found a pleasant reflection of the sky in a flooded field nearby.

The remotest glen?

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Late November, very late autumn – short days of chilly weather and cold light – I set off for a drive through Glen Lyon. I’d not been there for at least five years; felt like ages. Yet very little changes. The river Lyon still burbles on merrily past the Roman Bridge (that isn’t in any way Roman – it dates from the late 18th century); the mountains were all the same shape, with a light dusting of snow hinting at winter yet to come; the Scots Pine trees were still where I remembered them being (and, more to the point, I’ve since learned that they’re a remnant of the Caledonian Forest). There are, however, yet more potholes in the road from the dam at the end of the Glen up and over to Glen Lochay and someone’s plonked a cattle fence across the way. So it goes.

I had some fun with the Pentax 50mm f/1.8 lens, using it for landscapes (not a usual choice for me) and closeup work, even using a hole drilled in the lens-cap to make it into a pinhole.

Ansel had his “Moonrise, Hernandez, Mexico” moment. On the way back along the glen, I had my “Moonrise, Glen Lyon, Scotland” moment: the dullest of grey fading light, a clear view along between the mountains, dark bluey clouds passing rapidly in the distance and the moon rising beyond. Better yet, there were two boulders – one to climb, from which the other made a nice foreground feature. Click. Or more accurately, cliiiiiick, click, cliiiiiiiiiiiick – the sounds of a long exposure HDR sequence (1s, 0.25s, 4s) to capture the contrast on the scene. Categorically the best photo opportunity of the year.

I drove back over Ben Lawers in the pitch black with the rain turning to sleet.