When in doubt, grab one old manual prime lens, stick it on the camera and go for a stroll around the South Inch in Perth. This is the first of a small handful of posts of things that caught my eye one lunchtime, starting with the obvious view of St Leonard’s in the Fields Church of Scotland across the playing fields.
Category Archives: Scotland
Ben Lomond
Classic views – the familiar pointy triangular shape of a snow-covered Ben Lomond with its head in the clouds, from the Loch Ard Forest track
Sunlit Snow
A classic Trossachs view – sunlight on snow-capped mountains (Sron Armailte, Ben Vane and part of Ben Ledi), from the Duke’s Pass.
Loch Ard
A well-known view, complete with leading-lines fence and everything…
Inverawe Impressions (9/10)
A study of lines and shapes and forms of tree branches.
That Tree: Millarrochy Oak
“Make Photo Here” – another total photographic cliché, but I figured it had to be done. The Milarrochy Oak on the shores of Loch Lomond.
What the photos don’t show you is that the tree is barely three yards from the edge of the carpark and, with a pleasant sunset behind it, there were four other photographers lined-up along the strip of beach.
It has the advantage of just being in the Highlands: the caravan-site at Milarrochy Bay is definitely north of the Highland Boundary Fault, on psammite and semi-pelite; while the oak tree itself is in a local igneous intrusion surrounded by sandstone conglomerate.
Obligatory Zig-Zag
I remember when I first saw a contact of mine on Flickr produce a photo of this scene, quite a few years ago now – and it’s become quite the cliché since.
So, take your pick: wide-angle 16:9 or 5:4 aspect ratio similar to large-format? Black and white or colour (not so often used in longer exposures)?
Me, I liked the light – cool shades of dusk on one side of the concrete break-water, remains of a sunny afternoon on the other.
Around a Graveyard
A small set of photos made in Kinnoull Graveyard, Perth.
A friend from the photo-society had posted a handful of photos of this graveyard on facebook a few days previously, so I had a few ideas for scenes to shoot when we went there last November.
In particular, the obvious manipulated moody photo is an example of bokeh-panorama aka Brenzer technique – using a comparatively long focal length lens at wide aperture to narrow the depth of field and stitching a panorama to restore the field of view angle. In this case, it was a Zeiss 50mm f/2.8 lens, but the resultant shot would require a lens of 13mm f/0.85 to achieve in a single exposure.
Up Kinnoull Hill: classic landscape
It has to be done – the view from Kinnoull Hill, past the folly looking along the River Tay wending its way through the Carse of Gowrie.
I made this photo partly because some scenes have to be done, and partly to test a new Carl Zeiss 50mm Tessar f/2.8 lens acquired for surprisingly-cheap on eBay. The wide-angle field of view comes from this being a panorama of 11 frames stitched together; at over 56 megapixels, there’s enough detail to easily resolve roof-tiles in the houses at the foot of the hill, or road-signs across the A90.