“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.
Tag Archives: colour
Black Woods of Rannoch
A few photos from a stroll around some of my favourite Highland Perthshire woodland, the Black Woods of Rannoch. A great way to spend the afternoon – chilling out with camera admiring the light and shadows among the pine trees
Birks of Aberfeldy
It’s been a year or so since I last strolled around the Birks – high time to check all the waterfalls and trees are still there. (Spoiler: they are.)
Hedgerow Photography
Simple stuff – photos of a hedge while out walking one evening – but a plethora of species of flora to be found and enjoyed.
Around Loch Rannoch
It remains one of my favourite parts of Highland Perthshire – with walks in Caledonian Forest to enjoy, beautiful landscape around Loch Rannoch, and this most recent discovery – as I was driving I saw a little round fuzzy grey/black creature trundling along the verge; when I realised it was a badger, well, the car just pulled its own handbrake on so I could get out and say hello. On talking to a few passers-by, it transpires they’re well known, living in a sett under an old pine tree’s partially excavated roots.
Wildlife is awesome.
Sunset Timelapse
Further experiments making timelapse videos – this time the sunset looking across Strathearn to Crieff – from my favourite spot for hunting aurora.
The second has Ursa Major emerging, one star at a time, over the course of 50 minutes around midnight.
Both were taken using the Olympus Pen-F with its built-in intervalometer – the first with the 12-60mm f/2.8 PRO (four-thirds) lens, the second with the 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO (micro-four-thirds) lens – but the RAW ORF files were reprocessed using RawTherapee for better tone control, the results interpolated to generate 1500 frames (1 minute at 25fps) using a custom Julia script and merged with ffmpeg.
The audio is a minute of the T-in-the-Park festival recorded from a mile away with vocals added by sheep in nearby fields. A quick frequency analysis in Audacity shows the thumping bass peaks at around 58Hz (A1)…
T-in-the-Park festival from a mile away – frequencies peaking at 58Hz
Around Here
It’s been a lousy grey and wet day – definitely dreich – here, so here are a few photos of a walk I took down the road one evening a few weeks ago, on a lovely sunny day.
Graveyards? Not exactly my usual photographic cup of tea, but OK then…
Landscape is a bit more my scene, however. There’s some lovely undulating pastoral scenery around here, with views across to the distinctive shape of Ben Effray.
All photos made using the Olympus Pen-F and the four-thirds 12-60mm f/2.8 lens using 5-shot handheld HDR technique.
Birnam Hill
I’m losing count of how many times I’ve been up Birnam Hill near Dunkeld, which is no bad thing.
My favourite waterfall is still running and the scenery from Stair Bridge viewpoint, overlooking the line of the Highland Boundary Fault running past Rohallion Lodge is still beautiful.
Herewith, a comparison of colour vs black-and-white renditions.
Snowy Strathearn
The view driving south-west along the A9 just above Forteviot is quite a treat – an open expanse of Strathearn with the river and road flowing through the landscape, bounded on the south by the Ochil hills.
On a snowy winter’s day with passing sunlight, even better!
Herewith, a few photos taken in the course of a few minutes as a filthy dark cloud rolled in.
Above Comrie
A selection of photos taken around Glen Lednock, mostly up the Melville Monument overlooking Comrie.
This is Highland Boundary Fault territory; the fault itself runs up Glen Artney from the south-west straight through Cultybraggan PoW Camp, on through Comrie and across the A85 to the east.
I was also struck by how vintage Comrie itself looks from afar – a nice ratio of buildings interspersed by trees, with such a low vehicular traffic flow (even on a Saturday afternoon) that one could almost imagine the cars being replaced by carriages.
And no visit to Glen Lednock could be complete without the obvious long-exposure photo of the Wee Cauldron waterfall, of course!
A stroll around town: mankind’s bits
The flip-side of my previous post on what nature does around town: making architecture and art look interesting.
Corrie Fee
It seems like ages ago now – but back in April, a friend took me for a walk up Corrie Fee near Glen Clova. It was the first time I’ve been there, and didn’t know exactly what to expect; the first stretch through the forestry was pleasant (once the weather made its mind up what to fling at us), but when the view opened-out into a massive wide vista at the foot of a corrie, complete with glacial morraine hillocks, it was wonderful.
Out in the middle of nowhere
On a whim, a friend and I spent a few hours out in the middle of nowhere, Aberdeenshire – hunting aurora which totally failed to show, avoiding fog and pointing cameras sky-wards to see what could be seen.
I quite liked the lights of a cow-byre against the mist, the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters in the constellation of Taurus and a little wisp of cloud below the rising moon.
A Day in Argyll (2): Inverawe
No trip to Argyll is complete without a drive around Inverawe. A beautiful place, with woodland left to nature to do its thing in the middle of the estate. This time, the trees were particularly gorgeous in the sunlight.
Of course, what really matters is that Old Friend, the first and most characterful of the trees I later identified as a goat willow, is doing well. He is.
My favourite of many old goat willow trees around the estate – increasingly falling apart at the seams, it’s still a characterful tree.
Around Birnam Hill: landscape old and new
The last in a small series of photos from Birnam Hill near Dunkeld.
As far as I can tell, the first two photos are taken more or less on the Highland Boundary Fault – a line runs from Stare Dam past Rohallion lodge, up through one quarry and across the A9 through another slate quarry.
Test shots from a favourite walk, playing with the new mobile – DNG RAW files processed in Darktable.