Around Inverary

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At the start of October, I spent a happy Saturday on a photo-walk organized by a friend around Inverary in Argyll, the group numbering nearly 20 folks.

It was quite a day – over 7 miles walked, folks socialized with, the town and surrounding landscapes investigated.

We started with a trip up the bell-tower and the adjacent All Saints’ Scottish Episcopal Church in the middle of town:

After that, we visited Inverary Jail – quite interesting to get a glimpse of the conditions folks lived in. A friendly guard posed for us:

As we were walking around to the castle for lunch, there was a burst of sunlight over the landscape. A few days prior to the excursion I had discovered an old Pentax film camera in a storage box, and loaded it with film and acquired an extra 50mm prime lens for it, along with an adapter to the Sony NEX-7. So this is Strone Point and the top of Glen Kinglas, on an old 50mm f/1.7 “nifty fifty” Pentax PK-fit lens:

We had lunch in the Inverary Castle tearooms:

Inverary Castle

Inverary Castle

The afternoon was spent climbing up Dun na Cuaiche. I was impressed to see what an effect the geology has on the area, as (igneous) felsite hills to the north of the town give way to psammite (partially metamorphosed sedimentary) bedrock along the shore of Loch Fyne. The watchtower is a folly – the only thing it looks out over is the castle itself, affording no real protection from anyone else feeling like invading!

 

Around Birnam Hill: landscape old and new

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The last in a small series of photos from Birnam Hill near Dunkeld.

As far as I can tell, the first two photos are taken more or less on the Highland Boundary Fault – a line runs from Stare Dam past Rohallion lodge, up through one quarry and across the A9 through another slate quarry.

Test shots from a favourite walk, playing with the new mobile – DNG RAW files processed in Darktable.

Aurora!

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For the second time, I was lucky enough to see the aurora from Perth, last night. It was quite an impressive display; by the time I got out to darker skies it was quite low above the horizon, but the greens were strong to the naked eye and some strong rays came and went over time.

I still need to work on a good viewing location, but out beyond Rhynd is a good start.

Strolling around town

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A small collection of things seen in the course of one day strolling around Perth: the classic view of St Leonard’s church with its spire across the South Inch; sun setting on the Craigie golf course; a chestnut tree. Well, why not 🙂

Glen Turret: Dark

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Two of my twitter friends have developed particular styles – extreme dark low-key black+white rendition and negative inversion, respectively. It’s intriguing how scenes come out – a very different mapping from the usual realism.

Portknockie (3/3): Bow-Fiddle

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I’ve left the usual photos to last, seeing as how everyone else has shot this scene before.

It wasn’t particularly easy; the tripod was struggling to stay steady in the breeze and the course of a few seconds between adjusting the camera, leaving it to stop vibrating and pushing the shutter remote release, the light was changing radically from dull shade to bright sunlight on the foreground rocks. Still, a moderately long exposure worked, eventually.

Herewith, four different ways of processing the same images.

Portknockie (2/3): colourful rocks

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The coast at Portknockie features an intermingling of Cullen quartzite (dating from Lower Dalradian times, 650 million years ago during which time they’ve transformed from sedimentary sandstone through partial volcanic metamorphosis) and the usual Highland psammite and semi-pelite.

The colours in these photos are more or less natural; it was totally stunning to be in the shady cave with the daylight behind and beyond, with these huge colourful boulders to play with.

For a sense of scale: the photos featuring a distant patch of light playing on the sandy pebble floor, well that gap is large enough to walk right through. A veritable cathedral of colour.

Fields

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Fields run deep in golden swards
Hot summer winds blow through the corn

Ripening corn/barley, Auchterarder.

Dunnottar Castle

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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.

Glen Clunie: Landscape Vistas

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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.