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.
Tag Archives: closeup
Perth Highland Games
I spent much of this afternoon at the Perth Highland Games held on the North Inch. Amongst other things, there were many stalls selling leather and jewellery products, cyclists, heavy-weight sports including the shot-put and hammer, lots of pipe & drum bands (including St Andrew’s Pipe Band from Brisbane, Australia) and several cuddly dogs (never met a Pharoah Hound before!).
In the Woods
It’s been a while since I made photos of closeups in the woods – and for the most part, last time around I avoided contrasty light for the purpose too. Last night, I took a single prime lens (my favourite Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 of old) and one of my favoured strolls over Craigie Hill around the golf course, seeing what there was to be seen under the trees…
Water close-ups
A small series of closeup studies in flowing water, taken on a stroll around the Falls of Bruar.
I’ve admired the striation lines in the psammite riverbed below the lower bridge at the Falls many times – yet every visit they’re still fascinating every time.
Favoured landscape: details
Photos from around the Highland Boundary Fault: the first psammite / semi-pelite rocks beside the path, a valley through which the fault runs, and a feather. Don’t ask how long it took to photograph the feather.
A Favourite Waterfall
A couple of views of a small part of a favoured waterfall on my walk up Birnam Hill.
A Favourite Walk
Around January I discovered a new walk near Dunkeld that quickly became a favourite way to spend a weekend afternoon. Starting from the Pass of Birnam, head up the track from Bee Cottage and turn left to go around the south side of Duncan’s Hill then rejoin the path up to Stair Bridge Viewpoint and the top of Birnam Hill.
As routes go, it gives a mixture of sheltered woodland tracks and sweeping landscape views, complete with my favourite feature – you can watch the rocks changing from till to slate to psammite and semi-pelite as you cross the Highland Boundary Fault. Small wonder I’ve done it half a dozen times dragging various folks along with me, gradually exploring further each time as the winter receded.
These photos are from an experiment with a Prakticar 24mm lens (M42 fit) – acquired for cheap from ebay and stuck on a wonky adapter which might explain some focussing issues. Several of them depict the line of the HBF through the landscape, with hills on one side in the Highlands and on the other in the Lowlands.
Bluebells
A day out, today, with the Focus on Photography Perth meetup group. We parked in the MacRosty park carpark in Crieff and strolled along Lady Mary’s Walk, a dismantled railway line on the north side of the River Earn to the Trowan woods.
Many photos were taken. I was feeling a bit experimentalist, so deployed a couple of tricks:
- Helios 58mm f/2 lens with lens-cap covered in many holes – this gives many superimposed images, a bit like a starburst filter; I thought it would work well with the small-scale textures such as repeating blue and white flowers
- an infra-red filter – partly for long exposures in daylight (it’s similar to using a 10-stop ND1000 filter) and partly for the effect when shooting foliage with a strong red filter.
Herewith:
Glen Affric: Rockery
There’s an impressive outcrop of rocks (psammite and semi-pelite, looking rather like limestone) near the waterfalls in the River Affric. Some kindly soul had balanced these pebbles on a boulder on their way past previously.
Glen Affric: Tree Closeups
Perth close-ups: floral colour
The last in a short series of photos from a stroll around Perth.
These are all processed slightly differently from my usual workflow – instead of darktable, I used RawTherapee with a film emulation (allegedly Fuji Provia). As with the others in this series, all images were made on a Helios 58mm f/2 prime lens, pretty wide open.
Perth: floral closeups: arty oddities
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.
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.
Thank you for following.
Inverawe Impressions (9/10)
A study of lines and shapes and forms of tree branches.