First Munro

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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.


  • Views found whilst descending Schiehallion: abstract patterns of large white fluffy clouds catching the sunlight.
  • Hints of misty cloud blowing gently away across the landscape.
  • Views found whilst descending Schiehallion: abstract patterns of large white fluffy clouds catching the sunlight.
  • Sunlit Rockery
  • Views found whilst descending Schiehallion: abstract patterns of large white fluffy clouds catching the sunlight.
  • Views found whilst descending Schiehallion: abstract patterns of large white fluffy clouds catching the sunlight.

Bring on the mountains – I have climbing to be doing 🙂

Driving the A9

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Saturday’s involved driving much of the length of the A9 from Perthshire to Inverness and beyond to the Nice Placeâ„¢, and back down again.

On the return, I broke the journey in two locations I’ve previously admired but never stopped at: one, outside Bunchrew outside Inverness, to admire the clear view along the river estuary to the Kessock Bridge:

  • Many years ago I made a photo of this bridge spanning the river mouth from the shores much closer in Inverness. Since then the road along the south of the river out of the city has become a favourite drive, with its easy straights, gentle bends and occasional views back to the Kessock Bridge in the distance.
  • Many years ago I made a photo of this bridge spanning the river mouth from the shores much closer in Inverness. Since then the road along the south of the river out of the city has become a favourite drive, with its easy straights, gentle bends and occasional views back to the Kessock Bridge in the distance.

Odd: I’ve lived around Perthshire for over a decade and driven this stretch of the A9 many many times, but never explored Ruthven Barracks before. I was fortunate enough to arrive just as the moon was rising in the north-east – a lot larger by eye than it appeared in the photos, but it made a good backdrop to the ruined buildings. Otherwise, in the cold late afternoon light, the ground covered in a dusting of snow, it all looked rather bleak…


  • A view from behind the well-known Ruthven Barracks ruin looking straight up the Inshes along the River Spey to the moon rising in the distance.
  • Classic use for a drone – fling it up and over a ruin and admire the former Ruthven Barracks innards from on high.
  • Ruthven Barracks, near Kingussie, Speyside.

For a final subject, just as I was packing up the drone to leave Ruthven Barracks, I noticed a splash of soft light on very low clouds clipping the Cairngorm mountains in the distance. Long lens; click; got it.

  • No eagles found flying this day – but the distant gorge is on Creag na h’Iolaire in the Cairngorms. An interesting photo to make – I had been standing beside the road, flying the drone around the adjacent ruins, when I spotted the low cloud and soft light in the distance. On closer inspection, one can just about make out the snow-covered slopes of the adjacent a’Chailleach peeking through the cloud.
  • No eagles found flying this day – but the distant gorge is on Creag na h’Iolaire in the Cairngorms. An interesting photo to make – I had been standing beside the road, flying the drone around the adjacent ruins, when I spotted the low cloud and soft light in the distance. On closer inspection, one can just about make out the snow-covered slopes of the adjacent a’Chailleach peeking through the cloud.

Winter around Rannoch

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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.

  • Patches of mist above Loch Rannoch near Croiscraig / Camghouran.
  • ..then we went for a stroll underneath all that mist, too.

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

  • Black Woods of Rannoch late in the day – hints of mist rising in the distance, colours turned cool. It’s interesting how this end of the Black Woods is so much more densely planted – even though the Scots Pine is a native species, it’s still not naturally evolved. Indeed the history of the Black Woods includes attempts to log the forest – one can only presume this was an attempt to replant, with native species, but still with some potential degree of profit in mind.
  • Black Woods of Rannoch

Birnam Hill: Winter

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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:

  • Snow-capped hills either side of the Highland Boundary Fault line – catching the last warm rays of sunset in the distance.
  • Snow-capped hills either side of the Highland Boundary Fault line – catching the last warm rays of sunset in the distance.

Straight-down abstracts – trees and outlines of the Birnam Burn flowing through the snow:

  • Wiggly shapes – the Birnam Burn running down past Stare Bridge viewpoint.
  • Wiggly shapes – the Birnam Burn running down past Stare Bridge viewpoint.

Ground-level tree abstracts:

  • Detail of tree twigs and filigree – lichen-covered branches silhouetted against the low winter sun.
  • Detail of tree twigs and filigree – lichen-covered branches silhouetted against the low winter sun.

As an experiment to help learn my way around the Shotcut video editor, I made a short video of the area too:

Craig Varr: Misty Landscape

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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.

  • Sparse trees on Creag an Fhithirich, better known as the Sleeping Giant: a beautiful lumpy shapely crag in the foreground before Meall Dearg across the valley from Craig Varr.
  • Simple things: abstract shapes of tree branches and twigs forming a fine filigree silhouetted against the sky beyond.
  • Some of my favourite landscape elements: a contrasty plasma-cloud sky and overlaping layers of mountains receding into the distance, the other side of the Black Woods of Rannoch.
  • Shape and solitude: a much-windswept lone tree battling the elements at the top of Craig Varr.
  • Shape and solitude: a much-windswept lone tree battling the elements at the top of Craig Varr.
  • On previous visits to the location I’ve tried to replicate another photographer’s work, getting the Sleeping Giant a mile away across the river in the corner of the photo; this time, however, thick mist at the top of the crag put paid to that idea, completely eliminating anything in the distance with a visibility of about 50yd.
  • On previous visits to the location I’ve tried to replicate another photographer’s work, getting the Sleeping Giant a mile away across the river in the corner of the photo; this time, however, thick mist at the top of the crag put paid to that idea, completely eliminating anything in the distance with a visibility of about 50yd.
  • An energetic climb up Craig Varr outside Kinloch Rannoch as the mist flowed over the mountains, followed by a quick descent to return to civilisation. This was taken from the way back down, as I paused to admire the clouds flowing fast along Loch Rannoch like steam trains.
  • An energetic climb up Craig Varr outside Kinloch Rannoch as the mist flowed over the mountains, followed by a quick descent to return to civilisation. This was taken from the way back down, as I paused to admire the clouds flowing fast along Loch Rannoch like steam trains.

Caithness Holiday Day 2: Whaligoe Steps and Camster Cairns

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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 we established the meaning… and twenty-two years later I still remember the turn of phrase and was pleased to identify the first phone-box in this Spring’s return visit.

Whaligoe Steps themselves are 365 steps down the side of a steep cliff to a former port for offloading herring boats; women would gut the fish and carry it up in barrels.

The place itself is quite an impressive geo with a fault nearby in the rock – strata lines pushed up by thrust – and pleasant views out to sea.

Further down the road are Camster Cairns – quite impressively large piles of rocks with interior chambers, perhaps the oldest buildings in Scotland at 5000yr old.

It had been another ludicrously hot day, with temperatures up over 25-28ºC, so we finished the day’s explorations on the north coast at the Slates of Fulligoe in East Mey, where the setting sun was partially obscured by a thick sea haar – very pleasantly cool.

 

This was the second evening I’d set out to make a timelapse of the sunset into dusk. At least this time I was prepared for haar coming in off the sea (chose a safer less-cliff-top location near the path back, for starters). It did not disappoint: over the course of an hour the sun moved, the waves came and went, and a huge bank of fog moved in transforming the scene from brilliant sunset reflecting on the water, to complete white-out. All the possible moods of the landscape in barely an hour – quite awesome.
This photo is a temporal flattening of a timelapse sequence – using the intervalometer to shoot HDR brackets 3*±1EV at regular intervals which can be made either into a timelapse video or averaged-out into a still, like this. (The sun itself is blended from fewer images to avoid motion blur.)

Exploring Strathearn

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I spent a happy evening exploring the Quoig area in Strathearn – the floodplain of the river Earn between Comrie and Crieff, south of the A85. Disused railway line, Sir David Baird’s monument and a luscious sunset. Can’t complain 🙂

 

West Woods of Ethie

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It was one of those crazy late-spring days with a clear divide in the weather – everywhere north of the highland boundary fault was meant to get extreme precipitation, while Fife and Angus remained cool and dry. So we walked for a while in the West Woods of Ethie, admiring the lines and shapes of tall beech trees and subtle light and shade under the canopy.

Aberdeenshire Coast: Catterline

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I’d never really explored much of the Aberdeenshire coastline. On Saturday, however – feeling liberated from EV range anxiety – I discovered Catterline, just south of Fowlsheugh and Dunnottar. Towards the end of a beautiful sunny day, with just enough low golden light on the landscape… I had to fly the drone a bit, too.

The coast enjoys many large rocky outcrops (all conglomerate for a few miles around):

Perhaps my favourite shot is one of the more unusual by my standards: quite a thought-out composition of receding layers of rock, with the cliffs behind casting a huge shadow mid-way up one of the rocks, with Todhead Point lighthouse in the distance – near and far, light and dark, mankind and nature all rolled into one:

Todhead Point Lighthouse from Catterline Bay

Not bad going for the little Fuji camera; having set it to f/16 for depth of field, I’m surprised it chose exposures 1/52s and 1/26s at ISO 1600 and 1/60 at ISO 1000 for its HDR bracketing, but the results are excellent, no noise problems even in the shadows.

To finish, a simple statement of peace: nothing much, just sky above, a gentle disturbance in the sea below; all is calm, all is blue:

Peace: blue sky, blue sea

Birks of Aberfeldy

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A few weeks ago, I spent a happy Saturday afternoon strolling around the Birks of Aberfeldy, testing the newly acquired Fuji X-T20.

For context, a general landscape of the lower end of the gorge with the Moness water flowing around rocks and pebbles in the riverbed:

The Moness river flowing over rocks and pebbles

For consistency, everything else was shot coupled with the Helios 58mm f/2 lens using the Acros+Yellow black&white film emulation mode and ISO 200.

Some abstract tree foliage patterns:

Details of tiny flowers closeup:

Of all the mini-waterfalls up the left side of the gorge, I’m particularly fond of the way the water flows over the moss on this one:

Statue of Robert Burns sitting on a bench:

Scultpure of Robert Burns sitting on a bench at the Birks of Aberfeldy

Shortly after these photos were made, the heavens opened – a huge cumulonimbus cloud the shape of the Starship Enterprise disgorged itself over a lot of Highland Perthshire, flooding the roads in Aberfeldy itself; as I was walking down the north side of the gorge, it was quite disconcerting feeling the sandy gravel getting washed away in the channels underfoot. Fun fun!

Twilight

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Some more tests of the Fuji X-T20 in low light conditions.

Summer has the worst daytime light for photography with harsh shadows and washed-out pale tones; however I love the night sky with its permanent twilight (at this latitude) giving cobalt blue sky with hints of the sun’s warmth just below the horizon.

Plus it’s more comfortable than winter astrophotography 😉

Three studies in cloud structure – nature’s abstract patterns and a tiny blob of light of a hamlet across Strathearn:

Continuing the anthropocene-influence theme, glorious blue, red and pale clouds in an orange-tinged sky against a tiny pylon breaking the horizon:

The Pylon

The Pylon

 

 

Waterfalls and Mountains

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We spent Saturday afternoon driving around the Tay Forest Park – up to the Mains of Taymouth at Kenmore for lunch then along the south Loch Tay road to the Falls of Acharn – a comparatively steep climb up the side of the gorge and negligible water in the falls, but there was pleasant subtle light making the most of the colours on the surrounding rocks:

Nice rocks (typical Highland semi-pelite) covered with colourful beech leaves and green moss. Shame they’d forgot to turn the water on…

Next stop: just outside Ardeonaig there is a tiny layby where the view of the southern end of Loch Tay opens up. There was pleasant light on the sides of Ben Lawers too:

Still a favoured viewpoint right by the side of the South Loch Tay road – lovely soft mountainside illuminated by gentle light and shadow.

Driving further down the road to Killin, there was an awesome cloud inversion flowing around Ben More in the distance, outside Crianlarich – so I stopped at Lix Toll services and made a panorama of it:

Observant viewers will spot there’s even a tiny fragment of snow remaining toward the far left of the shot on Stob Binnein – not bad for the last week of June!

The final stop of the afternoon was at Edinample Falls along the South Loch Earn road – a small gorge but beautifully shaped with pleasant light through the surrounding trees and a decent amount of water flowing around the rocks.

An overview of the waterfalls at Edinample – lovely sunlight illuminating the rocks nearby

 

Recovery: Keil’s Den, Fife

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Still feeling very under the weather from a bout of food poisoning, I spent a happy Sunday afternoon walking around Keil’s Den outside Lower Largo, Fife – recommended by the Woodland Trust as a site for seeing bluebells.

It was still a week or two early in the spring for bluebells, but there were a few in evidence, along with a few expanses of unmistakeable white wild garlic.

There’s something pleasantly restorative about a walk in the woods: something about the green hues, dappled light and shade, cool breezes under the trees. It works.

My favourite photo from the afternoon was this strange beech tree – a strong young stem well on its way to producing a new crown of foliage, growing from the remains of an old battered and eroded upright trunk:

Life from old – a young stem growing into a strong crown of foliage from the remains of a much-damaged eroded old tree trunk.

Spittal of Glenshee

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I don’t remember much about the hotel in Spittal of Glenshee – I suspect I saw it a few times when passing by up the glen, but that’s about it. I didn’t have recourse or time to visit the area for a few years, during which time it burned down in 2014 – quite a transformation, leaving the land just fenced-off to decay.

Nice setting:

As an aside, a friend and I were recently nattering about the saturation slider and how there’s always a temptation to overdo it. I mentioned that some images seem to “resonate” at multiple spots across the saturation axis – maybe fully saturated like slide film of old, maybe flatter like colour neg film of old, maybe artistically desaturated, maybe full-on black&white. The above image seems to work at 3 degrees.

Funky ruins: