Above the Highland Boundary Fault

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About 3-4 years ago, I first visited Birnam Hill. Made it around Duncan’s Hill to the south and through the woods… As I walked a path between old and new forestry, I wondered why there was a sharp drop down almost a metre to the level of the new trees.

Over subsequent visits I took a few photos, came back and took geotagged photos, all around the same area, went to the BGS, imported bedrock data via KML into Google Earth, correlated with the photos… After a couple of years I’m confident that the dip in the landscape is evidence of the Highland Boundary Fault – a line that runs all the way from Arran and Comrie to the south-west, through Stare Dam and Rohallion Loch and lodge, up along this dip between the trees and away to the east before heading off north-east to near Stonehaven. From a suitable angle it looks like someone’s taken a bicycle tyre and run it over the landscape, causing an impression relative to the surrounding hills and mountains.

Apart from that, the scene from Stair Bridge Viewpoint is highly photogenic and while I’ve made several photos of the view south and east since, I’ve always wanted to fly a drone along the line of the fault.

A few days ago, the dream came true: a perfect clear dry bright sunny winter’s day, snow lying on the ground, low sun illuminating the ground, all quiet and calm.

A clear winter’s day:

You have to be standing all-but on the HBF to take this:

A selfie, of sorts: straight down landing on Stair Bridge:

I managed a couple of runs from near Rohallion Lodge up toward the A9 with the drone, spliced them together into a fly-by to give an impression of the topology.

And a still photo (I still shoot them! – but mostly HDR panoramas…) looking east from above the cusp of the saddle landform between old and new forests:


To wrap up the afternoon, there was some lovely light on an avenue of beech trees, walking back to the main road:

Bucket-list Item: CHECKED!

Autumn Holiday Day 1: The Nice Place

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There’s no better place to start a holiday than the Nice Place(TM), even if it does involve getting up and on the road at 4am for a 165-mile drive up north.

The sun rose over Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin as I approached:

The Caledonian Forest at Glen Affric was its usual beautiful self – still not cold enough for morning mist in the trees, but brilliant morning sunlight and heavy rain caused a wonderful vibrant double rainbow while I was down by the river.

For a change, I took a long walk a couple of miles along the side of Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin, to be rewarded with a gorgeous view of Sgurr na Lapaich covered in pure white snow, across the water.

Other views from the morning:

The First Morning of Winter

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I spent the morning of Dec 22 – the first day of winter – up Kinnoull Hill. There was beautiful mist rising from the River Tay as it meanders through the Carse of Gowrie.

I experimented with a few new compositions too: semi-abstract views of the hills of north Fife, the motorway/A90 junction and the river north of Perth as well.

My favourite two images were the fairly conventional view from above the cliffs, looking past the folly along the Carse of Gowrie. It’s not that comfortable a location to shoot – to get a clear view of the tower, one has to stand in a gorse bush…

Strathearn Sunset

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My sense of the geography of Strathearn has not really fitted together until quite recently. There have been a few locations, isolated points and a few lines: the A822 from Gilmerton up past Monzie to the Sma’ Glen; The Hosh at the foot to access Glen Turret; a small B-road between the two; a hill known as Kate McNiven’s Crag; and one or two other areas. More recently I’ve been climbing hills, “bagging” Torlum Hill and Laggan Hill as part of the Lady Mary’s Walk circuit out of Crieff.

The Highland Boundary Fault emerges in a burst of very lumpy landscape at the southern end of the Sma’ Glen. But what it does in the rest of Strathearn to the west, I’ve never really seen.

A couple of weekends ago I explored the Knock of Crieff independently; it struck me that the path up the north side afforded the perfect view along the length of the strath to the far mountains in the west, an elevated view along the glacial U-shape.

So late on Sunday afternoon I took the drone for a spin slightly out over the strath and made a panorama of 7 shots, each a 5-shot HDR exposure bracket sequence – blended on Linux, stitched and edited in Serif Affinity Photo for the iPad.

Lowlands to the left of me; Highlands to the right…

And just for the record, this is what it looked like in the middle of stitched the blended panorama, before I cropped and toned it:

Panorama stitching screenshot

Glen Clova

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A couple of years ago, a photo-friend and I spent a happy afternoon exploring Corrie Fee in Angus; I remembered emerging from the trees in an impressive bowl of a glacial corrie. In August, I sought to repeat the experience, starting from the carpark nearby, but in my haste to get off the ghastly Forestry Commission track (more like a hard gravel road ploughed through the forestry, complete with yellow metal gantries), I wound up taking a different path. It also emerges from the trees into a bowl of a glacial corrie, but felt different and I couldn’t work out whether it was the wrong exit from the woods or what.

Came home and checked the geotagged images to find it was not Corre Fee but Glen Clova instead. That would explain a lot of things! And unsurprisingly, I now use ViewRanger to navigate whilst hiking.

Still, a couple of hours bumbling around in the grass finding interesting photos in a dramatic bit of landscape on a moody afternoon… Can’t complain.

As I was stumbling around in the foot of the glen, I stumbled across this lovely little burn tumbling its way through the hillside:

The surrounding rocks are quite dramatic – I was amazed at the green and purple hues of moss and primitive plants growing on the crags around

And much as I know the forestry is entirely artificial now, it still drapes over the landscape like a cloak.

The Nice Place(TM)

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It’s been a bit of a dream, a life-mission of a bucket-list item, but the other week I flew over some of the Caledonian Forest at Glen Affric – the drone’s maiden flight, as it happens, and a new way to admire the trees from a different angle.

A scene I hope to revisit more often as flying skills evolve.

Above Kinnoull Hill

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I’ve discovered DJI GS (“groundstation”) Pro, which allows me to plot-out routes in advance with waypoints and control what happens at them, long before arriving at a location.

Well, currently we’re at the stage of wondering why the camera’s pointing back the way we came when it should be looking exactly the opposite direction.

Still, there’s a lot of nice views to be had above Kinnoull Hill.

 

And the finished video:

Glen Artney

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Just one photo from a quick afternoon excursion to explore Glen Artney earlier in the year. Well, one photo, processed 3 ways.

This was the first, and so far only, time I’ve felt the urge to invert the tripod centre column; in the process I discovered that the Pentax K-1 live-view display will happily invert the image correctly, but leaves all the exposure and histogram overlays the wrong way up – as if trying to use the thing upside-down was not hard enough itself! Oops.

A pleasant waterfall in the Allt na Drochaide burn, a tributary to the Water of Ruchill, Glen Artney.
This was the first, and so far only, time I’ve felt the urge to invert the tripod’s centre-column and dangle the camera millimetres above the water. In the process, I discovered a bug with the Pentax K-1: if you use live-view upside-down, the image inverts itself correctly but all the settings controls (histogram, etc) do not. It’s tricky enough wondering where the control dials have gone, let alone where the numbers they control are to be found on screen. D’oh!

A pleasant waterfall in the Allt na Drochaide burn, a tributary to the Water of Ruchill, Glen Artney.
This was the first, and so far only, time I’ve felt the urge to invert the tripod’s centre-column and dangle the camera millimetres above the water. In the process, I discovered a bug with the Pentax K-1: if you use live-view upside-down, the image inverts itself correctly but all the settings controls (histogram, etc) do not. It’s tricky enough wondering where the control dials have gone, let alone where the numbers they control are to be found on screen. D’oh!

A pleasant waterfall in the Allt na Drochaide burn, a tributary to the Water of Ruchill, Glen Artney.
This was the first, and so far only, time I’ve felt the urge to invert the tripod’s centre-column and dangle the camera millimetres above the water. In the process, I discovered a bug with the Pentax K-1: if you use live-view upside-down, the image inverts itself correctly but all the settings controls (histogram, etc) do not. It’s tricky enough wondering where the control dials have gone, let alone where the numbers they control are to be found on screen. D’oh!

My Strathearn

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I’m very fond of the views along the length of Strathearn – from the Knock at Crieff or above Monzie joinery on the A822 road looking west, the view to overlapping hills in the distance is deeply pleasant.

This is an unashamed dump of a load of photos made over the course of two strolls up and down Torlum Hill outside Crieff – the first mid-afternoon with a variable-ND / polariser filter, the second immediately afterwards with a regular 2-stop circular polariser instead. The same technique has been applied to all  – auto whitebalance and handheld HDR with a 1EV bracket either way. All are presented here in chronological order to compare the difference the light and a proper filter make in the landscape.

On the way back home after strolling up and down the hill, I saw a colourful Earth’s Shadow (aka Belt of Venus) developing, just as I happened to be passing one of my favoured characterful trees outside Muthill.

Autumn at Glen Affric (2)

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Having visited my favoured spot overlooking the Caledonian Forest, I proceeded up the side of Am Meallan to the well-known location with a view over the lodge and along the length of Loch Affric.

It’s definitely an autumn morning location: the sun rises behind you, skimming up and over the tops of mountains beyond Loch Beinn a’Mheadhoinn, rising as it heads south; accordingly, patches of bright sunlight interspersed with cloud-shadows lap like waves across the undulating landscape from distance right over you.

Of course I had to make a timelapse video of it:

Loch Affric timelapse 2017-10-14 from Tim Haynes on Vimeo.

And two more photos to summarize the morning:

Sunlight and cloud shadow – an outcrop of Scots Pine and birch trees on Sgurr na Lapaich

Proper colours. The most beautiful shade of green pine foliage interspersed with orange/yellow warm birch trees, all lapping up the early morning light.

A classic view – soft heather and bracken leading past Loch Affric to the mountains beyond (Kintail / Glen Sheil in the very far distance).
I had befriended a fellow photographer down at the glen earlier; the first I knew that they had followed me a few minutes later up to this memorial viewpoint was the word “WOW!” exclaimed a few feet behind me.

Autumn at Glen Affric (1)

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For about 13 years I have been of the opinion that it has not been a year without at least one trip to Glen Affric.

My favoured time is autumn, late October, to catch the trees in the Caledonian Forest reserve at their most colourful.

Arriving before sunrise, the light is all dull  and the scenery a moody shade of gloomy – the last vestiges of moon stars remaining in the cobalt blue sky.

One of my favourite scenes at Glen Affric – two ncie birch trees amongst purple and green heather.
Sadly this shot has been marred in recent years by the installation of a large wide path cutting right through the heather between bench and trees; this photo used to be easier to compose but now I’m too conscious of having to position the frame to avoid the path just below; it’s becoming too much of a trick-shot for my liking.

 

Slowly, over the course of an hour after the posted sunrise time, the sun will gradually rise behind Meall Dubh beyond Loch Beinn a Mheadhoinn, casting a beautiful light on the forest:

Having arrived so early, it is a delight to bask in the first proper warm sunlight of the day:

One of my favourite birches – always think it should be called “Dancer” for some reason – basking in the first warm rays of sunrise amongst the heather.

Sunrise at Kinnoull Hill

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Early one morning in August I set off up Kinnoull Hill in Perth; a 40-minute stroll through the woods and I arrived at the top just in time for sunrise.

There are a couple of classic viewpoints, although juggling foreground foliage is not the easiest. This is the view closer to the tower with a hint of sunlight behind the hill, a line of light streaking round to illuminate some of the yellow trees below:

Sunrise behind Kinnoull Hill, with the River Tay running along the Carse of Gowrie into the distance

And this is a little further back, the sun having risen illuminating the whole Carse of Gowrie and River Tay, sky still shades of yellow and pink:

A classic view of the tower and River Tay from Kinnoull Hill, Perth

Walking back through the woods was rather pleasant too – lots of dappled sunlight on the trees.

This was one of the first photo-sets I processed using Affinity Photo Pro on the iPad. Loving the colour and tone already!

Birnham Hill

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One of my favourite views is the Highland Boundary Fault running through the landscape, immediately in front of me standing at Stair Bridge Viewpoint part-way up Birnam Hill.

It looks particularly pleasant with light and cloud-shadows zipping over the trees too:

Photo-Walk 2017

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For several years, on and off, I’ve attended an annual Photo-Walk based in Inverary, Argyll. This year was no exception – always good to catch up with friends I’ve met on the walk previously.

As always, Argyll is a favoured place and Autumn a favoured season; the combination of light and landscape makes for enjoyable drives.

An auspicious viewpoint – right next to the public toilets on Inverary front – but it makes for a cracking view up the loch toward a spot of sunlight illuminating the hills around Ardkinglas.

This time the organizer, Richard, had brought a couple of props – most notably a bottle of Isle of Jura Superstition and I had one or two ideas in mind “just in case” we ended up at a particular favourite waterfall.

 

We made our way down the slippery embankment to the burn, where I set up tripod amongst the boulders to maximize the lead-in lines of water flowing around the rocks up to the waterfall – tripod placement was fairly tricky with a wide-angle (24mm) lens and the slippery lumpy terrain to negotiate – and then as the camera was busy taking 20s exposures (4x with pixel-shift) I trotted back and forth through the water firing a flash-gun down onto the bottle of whisky and surrounding rocks (manual triggering at 1/8 power with the diffuser out and reflector down to stop the light itself registering in the scene).

Product Placement
I quite like Isle of Jura whisky… not necessarily on the rocks though.

I had originally experimented focussing in on the bottle itself and using a wide aperture to restrict depth of field, but that did not fall naturally through the scene – the waterfall was still sharp behind – so I stopped-down to make everything in focus and relied on post-processing tricks in Affinity Photo to draw the eye onto the bottle differently instead – some Orton effect and various soft-light Gaussian blurs, masks and elliptical gradient fills to boost the saturation, make it all glow and still leave the bottle sharp and bright. The final toning came from Snapseed of all things.

I’ve done a little product-photography before but never tried blending [bad pun intended] it with landscape work, let alone pairing it with light-painting, but I think it worked – certainly compared to the straight shot, the bottle with its amber glow just makes it.

Morvern 5/4: The Road Back

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And so we come to the last post in the series, a set of photos not entirely in Morvern but more on the way back up the shores of Loch Sunart and Loch Linnhe to the Corran Ferry, across and down to Loch Leven at Ballachulish.

There’s something wonderfully uplifting about rattling along these wee roads on beautiful sunny days, admiring the light.