Two scenes caught my eye on a stroll around the town. First, leaves basking in the proper sunlight of a fresh spring are always pleasant to behold. Second, I always think the new black buds of an ash tree look like pads on a paw – so, gimme three!
Perth: floral closeups: lines
Part two of a lunchtime stroll around Perth – floral closeups, a study in sprays of lines filling the frame.
I have no idea how the dog’s ball toy got stuck in that tree.
Perth: around the South Inch
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.
Cairnwell
It’s been years since I visited the Cairnwell in Glenshee. The road is still just as steep and the glens are just as glacial as ever I remembered. This is the view from the ski centre, Glenshee.
Crail Harbour Rocks (3): optimum light
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.
Crail: black and white
Three views of the beach at Crail, Fife – a study in the shapes of rocks and stones.
Crail: colour
Three views of the beach at Crail – for the geologists, the rock is old red Devonian sandstone. For everyone else, the seaweed is slippery and the water is wet.
Crail Harbour Rocks: then and now
Quite a few years ago, I had just acquired a large-format view-camera (a Shen-Hao); for a first excursion, I took it to Crail in Fife and made an interesting study of the boulders submerged at the water’s edge on the beach.
Fast-forward five years, and I returned to the same beach in Crail with a little Sony NEX-7 camera and retook the same image-brief:
- Crail
- closeup
- water and rocks
- multiple superimposed exposures
The differences a few yards, a few years, and a different day can make! Enough, perhaps, to justify titling the new image “Crail Harbour Rocks (2)”.
Solar Eclipse 2015: a teaser
After all that driving to get this, I couldn’t let today pass without posting taster shot from the solar eclipse.
I find it interesting that, for all the posturing online about the need for Baader solar sheets and that ND filters wouldn’t provide enough protection, nature provided clouds as the best kind of filter anyway.
The colour photo was taken with a 20-year-old Centon 500mm f/8 mirror lens and probably an ND8 filter hand-held in front; the black and white image was the kit telephoto 55-210mm lens at the far end.
Both taken from the road beside Dunnottar Castle, Stonehaven.
Up East Lomond
The trig-point on top of East Lomond, one of the more noticeable hills in Fife. It’s not a bad route for spending a couple of hours strolling around – but the view’s much better on a sunny day.
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.
RIP, Sir Terry Pratchett
I loved many of his Discworld series, of course, for many years – a very favourite author of one’s – several – generations. But on hearing of his passing, the first quote that comes to mind is from A Slip of the Keyboard, collected non-fiction, showing a further glimpse of the man behind the books.
People have already asked me if I had the current international situation in mind when I wrote the book. The answer is no. I wouldn’t insult even rats by turning them into handy metaphors. It’s just unfortunate that the current international situation is pretty much the same old dull, stupid international situation, in a world obsessed by the monsters it has made up, dragons that are hard to kill. We look around and see foreign policies that are little more than the taking of revenge for the revenge that was taken in revenge for the revenge last time. It’s a path that leads only downwards, and still the world flocks along it. It makes you want to spit. The dinosaurs were thick as concrete, but they survived for 150 million years and it took a damn great asteroid to knock them out. I find myself wondering now if intelligence comes with its own built-in asteroid. – 2001 Carnegie Medal award speech.
Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015. Diagnosed with PCA [posterior cortical atrophy] in 2007, he battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write. He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.
Today is a good day to listen to some Tallis.
Loch Ard
A well-known view, complete with leading-lines fence and everything…
Inverawe Impressions (10/10)
For the final instalment in this series of images from Inverawe, three of the most characteristic subjects: sweeping lines of larch branches; a closeup of a particularly characterful oak leaf; and the road leading ever on and beyond.
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