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 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.
“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.
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.)
Continuing the theme of failed attempts to do astrophotography, I spent an evening out at Newport-on-Tay in Fife. There’s a neat little road leading down to a carpark with a tiny beach and rocky outcrop… with the interplay of artificial lights and huge blanket of fog, it needed photographing 🙂
Late in the afternoon I caught a ferry from Oban out to Mull.
Several times in the voyage, the light was just amazing.
Leaving Oban with sunlight and clouds over Kerrera:
An epic vibrant complete double-rainbow seeming to hover just 50yd behind the ferry:
Stunning light approaching Mull:
There’s something relaxing just simply watching the low sunlight reflecting off the bow-waves around the boat:
Detail of soft sunlight reflecting on the sea and bow-waves from the ferry.
I spent Saturday travelling, mostly driving, to old stamping ground in Argyll.
There were roadworks holding up proceedings at Cruachan visitor centre, so I stopped to take the obvious photo of the Pass of Brander from the carpark.
The other favourite view is from the Connel Bridge looking toward Ben Cruachan; this time, the mountain was hiding under a rain cloud. The Falls of Lora tidal race below the bridge was flowing pretty fast, with the incoming tide.
Two of my twitter friends have developed particular styles – extreme dark low-key black+white rendition and negative inversion, respectively. It’s intriguing how scenes come out – a very different mapping from the usual realism.
A short study in water – taken on a stroll along the side of Loch Turret.
I’ve left the usual photos to last, seeing as how everyone else has shot this scene before.
It wasn’t particularly easy; the tripod was struggling to stay steady in the breeze and the course of a few seconds between adjusting the camera, leaving it to stop vibrating and pushing the shutter remote release, the light was changing radically from dull shade to bright sunlight on the foreground rocks. Still, a moderately long exposure worked, eventually.
Herewith, four different ways of processing the same images.
Three photos from a pleasant afternoon’s stroll along the Baddoch Burn in Glen Clunie, just up the road from Glenshee.
Rocks can be so colourful at times, can’t they? 🙂
One Saturday lunchtime several years ago, I spent a happy hour bugging the assistants in my local favourite camera shop, trying to find the ideal tripod.
Having visited the Falls of Bruar the weekend previously, I had a particular photo of the waterfalls flowing around the rocks in mind.
As usual, Manfrotto was the most recommended make. I tried to believe in them, honestly, but with no combination of legs, invertible centre-column and 3-dimensional head being sturdy enough for the camera of the time, I emerged with a Slik. (This process has been repeated with the same outcome a few times since.)
That afternoon, I went back to Bruar with my new tripod and totally failed to get the photo I wanted, but by dint of pointing the camera the other way staring down the gorge after sunset had happened and the light was fading – what’s come to be known as the blue hour – I wound up with a photo that would be my No.1 most-popular on Flickr for about 5 years.
That was “Raw“.
The first of these is “Flow”, the photo I intended to make in the first place.
A couple of views of a small part of a favoured waterfall on my walk up Birnam Hill.
Herewith, a selection of snaps from a New Year’s Day stroll along the beach in Brighton and Hove.
Thought for the day: art is what you make of it, not the subject-matter to hand.
A continuation of, and the latest in, the “Crail Harbour Rocks” theme – I’ve already posted a comparison of the original study at this location from 2007 against a similar closeup from 2015; here we have a classic intimate-landscape view – optimum golden-hour light at sunset touching the rocks from foreground into the distance.