Happy new year! I saw the year in from Blackford Hill looking at the fireworks over Edinburgh Castle.
Watching folks arrive was almost like a scene from Lord of the Rings – this line of torch lights processing along the hillside track, reminiscent of the last march of the Elves.
Just a couple of photos from a stroll beside a burn down the bottom end of town today at lunchtime – not great light, in fact it was beginning to rain. But if looking up doesn’t work, look down and take abstract photos of trees reflected in the burn instead…
November: season of dreich grey rainy wet horrible days, punctuated by sunsets like this.
My friend Tom and I went for a stroll in the West Woods of Ethie in Angus. Not a woodland I’d encountered before, but it was quite magical in some ways – quite conscious of lurching from one clearing to another, surrounded by the characteristic shapes of beech trees in their green and yellow-orange autumn plumage.
For a slightly more immersive view of the woods… click this and wait a while 🙂
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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…
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:
There’s a couple of picturesque views to be had just below the hotel at Inversnaid harbour – the waterfall cascading down amongst the rocks one way, and opposite, a line of boulders leading toward the Arrochar Alps across Loch Lomond. Can’t complain.
I don’t often use the Pattanaik algorithm in LuminanceHDR, especially for colour results, but it seemed to work really well with the waterfall, nicely balancing low-key levels and saturation.
I’ve had it in mind to visit Loch Chon in the Trossachs for a little while now, to see if I could find similar views to other photos of the area.
It didn’t disappoint – there were some wonderful reflections of colourful trees to be enjoying.
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. 😉
A couple of views whilst out walking the dog – golden-hour sunlight on Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich over by Callander, taken from Auchterarder.
Olympus Pen-F, 75-300mm lens, RawTherapee, 5-frame HDRs blended with enfuse and toned in darktable.
The colour photos are for sale on EyeEm: Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich; sunset tree silhouette.
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 was a bit late joining the photo-walk this year, but caught up with the small crowd of folks in Inverary prior to walking around the town with a camera in tow.
The views from the front, looking up lochs Shira and Fyne to sunlit mountains surrounding Glenkinglas, were stunning.
We also went around the Jail, where one of the guides pretended to have been naughty…
More experiments with the Olympus 7-14mm lens: a study in trees around Glen Lednock.
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.
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.