A couple of views whilst out walking the dog – golden-hour sunlight on Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich over by Callander, taken from Auchterarder.
Olympus Pen-F, 75-300mm lens, RawTherapee, 5-frame HDRs blended with enfuse and toned in darktable.
The colour photos are for sale on EyeEm: Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich; sunset tree silhouette.
Driving home form the Argyll Photo-Walk, along the shores of Loch Fyne, I couldn’t help but stop to appreciate the golden evening light on the mountains surrounding Glenkinglas.
The Olympus Pen-F has a hi-res mode, which is a bit of a mixed blessing for use in the landscape. On the one hand, it constructs an 80-megapixel image never requiring more than 20 megapixels resolution from the lens. However, it does it by interleaving with sub-pixel super-resolution, for a total of 8 source frames per image, which results in dithering patterns around moving subjects. In the case of water, this can be mitigated by using a long exposure; in the case of clouds, much longer. For the photo showing Ardkinglas house across the water, I had an ND8 filter to make it a 1-second exposure. Unfortunately this introduced some serious colour-casts – so new filters have been ordered!
There’s something distinctive about the light in Argyll, even at the early end of Autumn; the gold as it touches the mountains is exquisite.
As part of the photo-walk we strolled around part of Dubh Loch just outside Inverary; the light up the end of the loch was beautiful, the rainbows gorgeous, the water reflections perfect.
Couldn’t ask for a nicer afternoon, rain notwithstanding.
I was a bit late joining the photo-walk this year, but caught up with the small crowd of folks in Inverary prior to walking around the town with a camera in tow.
The views from the front, looking up lochs Shira and Fyne to sunlit mountains surrounding Glenkinglas, were stunning.
We also went around the Jail, where one of the guides pretended to have been naughty…
More experiments with the Olympus 7-14mm lens: a study in trees around Glen Lednock.
I thought I’d not experimented with the 7-14mm lens much, so set sail for one of my favourite haunts – the Wee Cauldron in Glen Lednock just outside Comrie.
The Hermitage, by Dunkeld, has a very attractive woodland walk by the River Braan. At one time it used to boast the tallest tree in the Britain, although that honour has since moved to other forests. The Black Linn waterfall and gorge are most impressive.
Late Night Mist
“Through sepia showers and photo-flood days”, in the words of Runrig. It certainly felt like that – all the best scenes from an afternoon’s trip around Loch Rannoch seem to have featured water, preferably precipitating in the distance, most probably raining on me! Certainly makes for dramatic landscape photos.
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.)
Simple stuff – photos of a hedge while out walking one evening – but a plethora of species of flora to be found and enjoyed.
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.
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.
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.)
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.