It’s been a year or so since I last strolled around the Birks – high time to check all the waterfalls and trees are still there. (Spoiler: they are.)
Category Archives: Landscape
Donner und Blitzen
Wonderful amazing weather last night. The thunderstorm started around midnight, resumed sparking silently but continuously in the distance from 2 to 3am and then restarted yet again around 8-9am with jubilant thundercracks and resounding booming rumbles echoing off the clouds.
These photos were made around 2.30am – just the distant lightning illuminating the clouds.
Epic.
Around Loch Rannoch
It remains one of my favourite parts of Highland Perthshire – with walks in Caledonian Forest to enjoy, beautiful landscape around Loch Rannoch, and this most recent discovery – as I was driving I saw a little round fuzzy grey/black creature trundling along the verge; when I realised it was a badger, well, the car just pulled its own handbrake on so I could get out and say hello. On talking to a few passers-by, it transpires they’re well known, living in a sett under an old pine tree’s partially excavated roots.
Wildlife is awesome.
Sunset Timelapse
Further experiments making timelapse videos – this time the sunset looking across Strathearn to Crieff – from my favourite spot for hunting aurora.
The second has Ursa Major emerging, one star at a time, over the course of 50 minutes around midnight.
Both were taken using the Olympus Pen-F with its built-in intervalometer – the first with the 12-60mm f/2.8 PRO (four-thirds) lens, the second with the 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO (micro-four-thirds) lens – but the RAW ORF files were reprocessed using RawTherapee for better tone control, the results interpolated to generate 1500 frames (1 minute at 25fps) using a custom Julia script and merged with ffmpeg.
The audio is a minute of the T-in-the-Park festival recorded from a mile away with vocals added by sheep in nearby fields. A quick frequency analysis in Audacity shows the thumping bass peaks at around 58Hz (A1)…
T-in-the-Park festival from a mile away – frequencies peaking at 58Hz
Falls of Bruar Revisited
With a couple of hours to spare on Sunday afternoon, I revisited the Falls of Bruar. Even on a grotty wet day there were plenty of opportunities, around the lower bridge.
It’s at least the 8th time I’ve been there – but the geology is impressive as always with the natural arch formed by the river eroding the local rock (mostly psammite, as with much of the Highlands).
Some experiments with Live Composite mode on the Olympus Pen-F, as well as the usual (for me) high-resolution mode; everything taken using a circular polariser and ND4 filter for longer exposure times. Having made initial RAW conversions using RawTherapee, everything has been passed through LuminanceHDR to even-out the white-balance and tonemap for better image tone. (In cases where there’s only a small area of light in the frame, such as these flowing waterfalls, the Pattanaik algorithm can give interesting high-contrast results – set the gamma to about 0.3 and the frame turns mostly black with just the highlights remaining.)
Around Here
It’s been a lousy grey and wet day – definitely dreich – here, so here are a few photos of a walk I took down the road one evening a few weeks ago, on a lovely sunny day.
Graveyards? Not exactly my usual photographic cup of tea, but OK then…
Landscape is a bit more my scene, however. There’s some lovely undulating pastoral scenery around here, with views across to the distinctive shape of Ben Effray.
All photos made using the Olympus Pen-F and the four-thirds 12-60mm f/2.8 lens using 5-shot handheld HDR technique.
Edinburgh Fog
On Sunday, on a whim, I went down to Edinburgh. As always, the city was fairly heaving but I revisited one of my favourite locations – the Radical Road along the Salisbury Crags, which affords an excellent view from Blackford Hill round to the Parliament buildings.
So I tested the Pen-F’s timelapse video ability for the first time. The camera makes it a breeze: set up the scene (lots of filters to cope with the lighting), set it in aperture-priority mode, 300 frames at 5s intervals, push the button and off it goes. And nature provided! – simply point the camera at the city and watch the sea haar roll in, great low clouds of misty fog, obscuring the castle within minutes.
First time I’ve made a 4K video… unfortunately the results from the camera weren’t quite up to the quality I expected, so I reprocessed all the RAW ORF files on the notebook in bulk (using RawTherapee) and rendered the official video myself with ffmpeg.
I also made a wide panorama – 5 frames each in 80-megapixel high resolution mode; lots of image data, nicely stitched in Hugin as usual.
Birnam Hill
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
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.
Monadhliath Memories
A long time ago I was privileged to own a small bolthole property with an IV2 postcode – my own little patch of the proper Highlands. I visited it every fortnight, tended it well, and eventually couldn’t spare the time to keep it up as base moved beyond a reasonable commute distance.
A couple of weekends ago I revisited the area for the first time in years.
Some things have changed: a little traffic-light-controlled bridge is no longer there as the B851 has been slightly widened in parts; some of the surrouding hillsides have been clear-felled of their trees. But otherwise the lie of the land remains largely mercifully untouched. Strathnairn, with its rocky crags and landscapes of naught but light and water, still exudes a permeating emptiness – a present absence – that turns the role of viewer on its head, asking you “so what do you stand for?”.
Of course, my other favourite afternoon escape route was a few miles up the road to the comparative civilisation of Dores. That hasn’t changed much either. The view down Loch Ness is just as impressive, and the solar halo just hanging in the sky was both awe-inspiring and uplifting.
There’s a chain, that binds us all in lives of wonder
There’s a chain, hold it closely as you go
Let this name be your family and your shelter
Take this chain all your days, don’t let go.
- The Band From Rockall – There’s A Chain
Buchanty Spout
Sedimentary conglomerate rocks, a bend in the River Almond and some nice late afternoon light.
I’ve never explored this area particularly, but on a whim having passed through the hamlet of Buchanty the previous day, with a day to spare and remembering someone in the local photographic society having posted a nice photo of the Spout, I thought I’d have a look.
Even on an average day the flow was quite awesome – a small gorge, but deep water flowing fast along its way like a bubbling jacuzzi.
Olympus Pen-F in high-resolution mode; circular polarizer, an ND8 and grad-ND4 filters and HDR bracketing to control the lighting.
Olympus Pen-F: first excursion photos
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
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.
Aurora, March 2016
Arguably an even more impressive display of the Aurora this evening than the one over New Year.
I took the Pen-F out for its first attempt at night photography. What a way to test its capabilities!
Birnam Hill: Trees
Straight and curved, young to characterful and spooky: the many and varied moods of trees. A handful of photos taken on a stroll around Birnam Hill.
Birnam Hill: Details
A handful more photos from an afternoon stroll around Birnam Hill – little things that caught my eye. There was a small burn flowing down one of the paths, mostly covered in amazing semi-fractured ice crystals; patterns abound.