Winter along the Provost’s Walk

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This is fast becoming one of my favourite walks around town – not least because it’s less muddy than the other track out the back. Yesterday I awoke to find the world had turned white, complete with snow-drift piled-up on the front lawn by a passing snowplough. Naturally, over-inflated reports of traffic confusion abounded, although by the time I had to drive anywhere in the evening, the roads were as clear as a bell.

Anyway. I like this path. The Ruthven Water makes a great spot for the Doglet to paddle. All very relaxing and shiny in the white snow.

This is what it’s like around here…

Provost’s Walk:

Arty photos:

All shots taken on the Pentax K-1 using my new hand-held HDR workflow.

Along Loch Tay

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It’s a classic viewpoint – at the head of Loch Tay standing on the shores at Kenmore, looking down the length of the loch past the Crannog and island to mountains in the distance. Even without dramatic contrasty sunlight, it didn’t disappoint.

For the record, these were both 8-second exposures, around f/4.5 and ISO 400 using a Nisi circular polariser filter to balance the light between sky and reflection. Both images are a pair stacked for noise-reduction.

Around the Black Mount

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Detail of blades of grass poking throuhg a frozen Lochan na h’Achlaise, Rannoch Moor.

At the end of November I spent a happy Saturday afternoon driving out to the Black Mount area in Rannoch Moor, with photos in mind.

Didn’t help that I left the main camera battery at home in the charger, so was limited to the spare. Well, it makes one think when even turning the camera on to compose through the EVF uses finite battery life, especially in the cold. Lots of “pre-visualising” going on to keep the film-throwback photographer purists happy.

There were plenty of cars zooming along the A82 but a little stroll out into the bogs resulted in some nice landscape.

The crowning joy of the photographic excursion, however, was the total cliche scene of the Buachaille from the River Coupall. It’s sufficiently well-known that folks groan when it appears in photo-club competitions. The composition is more or less fixed, with varying extremity of weather conditions providing the value-additions to the photo.

This time, I spotted a little wisp of mist coming up Glencoe as I turned off down Glen Etive. There were only two other folks at the location; they said it was their second attempt that day as, on the way down the glen, there had been 20-30 folk milling around.

Funny how such an iconic landscape location still has people who will shoot it in suboptimal light.

We took a few photos, and dusk fell, with glorious shades of warm purple tints and an orange sky.

My temporary companions departed, leaving just me – well into post-sunset dusk blue-hour – at which point the wisp of mist rounded the base of the mountain underlining it in white to match the waterfalls in the river. And that is the shot of the day.

Buachaille Etive Mor from the River Coupall, Glen Etive

Stob Dearg – Buachaille Etive Mor from the River Coupall, Glen Etive

The Least Amount of Landscape

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Just to disprove the idea of deterministic landscape photography, as I was driving back from Acharn through Grandtully along Strathtay, the sky took on a most beautiful glowing cobalt-blue colour of dusk combined with the icy diamond clarity of sub-zero late autumn temperatures in the Highlands.

One of those scenes where it took a little work to convert the camera’s recordings back to something resembling what I saw: after dark fell I couldn’t make out what was in the fields beyond the car headlights; there was nothing but horizon and the glow… and one tiny fragment of wispy cloud.

It doesn’t get much more minimalist than this…

The Falls of Acharn

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Today’s random philosophical question: is landscape photography actually deterministic?

Research maps. Check weather forecast. Think about time and location and the maximization of opportunity. Take camera and go. Point it at things. Come back, process to some degree of satisfaction.

The process is certainly repeatable and it takes an incredible amount of luck to sway the results.

A couple of weeks ago, having passed by the village a couple of times this year on other travels, I set out for Acharn on the south side of Loch Tay with intention of using camera and tripod. They were duly deployed. And here are the results…

I was particularly pleased with the last pair, longish-distance zooms across the gorge to the water cascading over some very silvery-grey rock with two tree branches aligned like chopsticks beside the splash-down.

Finally, just for a sense of context, a making-of snap from the phone – this is how the last two were made:

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On the Way to St Fillan’s

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A few months ago now, I spent a happy Saturday afternoon driving around the countryside – visited some old haunts and refreshed memories. I had it in mind to spend some time shooting the well-known statue Still by Rob Mulholland in Loch Earn at St Fillan’s, but was more taken by the landscape en route – a little mist rising off a forest, clouds so low they obscure the outlines of the mountains.

So the majority of these photos were actually taken whilst parked in a layby off the A85. But I couldn’t possibly admit to that. 😉

Around the Hermitage

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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

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Late Saturday evening, I was driving back from Argyll to Perthshire; got as far as a country lane outside Braco a few miles from home and saw this beautiful fog swirling around a copse of trees with the Ochils in the background, all in the silvery moonlight.
 
Olympus Pen-F, Pentax 50mm f/1.7, 3 frames at 8s*8 in hi-res mode.
 
Unusually for me, there’s been quite a bit of work removing extraneous distractions such as foreground telegraph poles. But the feeling is still there 🙂
Late Night Mist

Late Night Mist

Loch Rannoch Precipitation

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“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.