Inverary: A Tale of Three Techniques

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In August I called in on an old friend in Inverary for a small guided tour around the local forests with camera in hand.

There was one particular photo I had in mind – ever since I first saw an old ruined barn with disused farm machinery, it was crying-out for the bokeh-panorama (aka Brenizer) technique – instead of one straight shot composed with the final focal-length in mind, one uses a longer lens (preferably a fast prime) and stitches the results into a panorama, to give an image with narrower DoF than was possible at the focal length in question.

Here’s the straight scene, taken on the Fuji X-H1 on the 16-50mm f/2.8 at 18mm – even wide open there’s no significant blurring in the background.

So here’s the stitched result, taken using a Helios 56mm f/2 wide open – drastic focus drop-off:

It took 100 frames at source – 2.4Gpx – but the result would be the equivalent of an 18mm lens at f/0.6. 

The second technique was keystone/perspective adjustment. On seeing a stone waterworks in the woods, my friend challenged me to get a view of it straight-on without using the drone. That’s simple enough – even though it’s several feet above head-height.

The third technique was simple long exposure: night had long fallen before I left the town but the clouds moving across Loch Fyne/Shira looked pleasantly ominous. Keeping base ISO, f/6.4 gave a 7s base exposure – with HDR 5*±2/3EV this became 7+18+30+27+10 = 92s combined total, retaining exposure from brightest point of clouds into shadowy areas in the mountainsides. (Contrast is not just a daytime problem!)

Several long exposures blended together into an HDR image of clouds and smooth water, Loch Shira from Inverary.

Another day… another sunset

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“Slight chance of convective weather” is rapidly becoming my new favourite weather alert, especially coming at the end of the day where it signals turbulent blends of low sun, rain and thick clouds.
It doesn’t get much better than last night, either. With sunset happening just after dinner… perfect 🙂

And my favoured view of the receding hills into Strathearn was looking particularly lovely in orange-pink tones too:

Sunset and showers – beautiful warm pink light despite the rain pouring down.

A Bit Damp

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Another Friday evening, another great way to end the week with a camera in hand. As I finished up work, wondering whether to mow the lawn, I looked out the window and saw awesome clouds zipping past.

Grab camera, grab Dog, go walkies and shoot whatever happens. There was rain. There was sun.

And after the rain, the sun illuminating the gently undulating crop fields contrasted amazingly with the remaining ominous clouds beyond.

Simple undulating rural countryside – with dramatic clouds above.

Exploring Strathearn

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I spent a happy evening exploring the Quoig area in Strathearn – the floodplain of the river Earn between Comrie and Crieff, south of the A85. Disused railway line, Sir David Baird’s monument and a luscious sunset. Can’t complain 🙂

 

Gear Change Time

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Back in May I had a bit of a holiday. Figured the primary camera would be occupied taking timelapse video sequences for a couple of the evenings, and what happens if I find something else to take a photo of? So a friend suggested I get a Fuji X-T20.

Loved it.

Sold the K-1 dSLR and all the other Pentax kit, bought a Fuji X-H1 and some nice lenses to augment it.

Having spent all last Friday having the day off for the purposes of swapping the gear, I called in at Portknockie to make some photos of the well-known Bow Fiddle rock. The tide was low, requiring more care scrambling over the rocks.

Getting a bit more artistic, a long exposure view of the clouds passing by and a toned and tweaked edit:

The Zeiss 12mm f/2.8 Touit Fuji X-mount lens is a beauty. Being for APS-C crop-sensor only, it’s comparatively small, but elegantly formed with the curves flowing from lens-hood to body where the aperture and focus rings are smooth rubber perfectly integrated into the body.

I still maintain the most interesting views are to be found within the caves beside Bow Fiddle, not just staring at the lump itself. This is the first test image made with the Zeiss lens – sitting inside one of the caves, looking out, an HDR composite of 5 frames ±2/3EV each and even so it took a delicate touch getting the best RAW conversion and blend (haven’t used LuminanceHDR in ages!).

Testing my newly acquired Zeiss 12mm f/2.8 Touit lens – inside one of the caves looking out, of necessity a 5-shot HDR ±2/3EV. That lens is awesomely sharp, even with slightly elevated ISO around 640-1600.

Finally, one to relax with: the most serene simple composition of blue-grey sky with warm crepuscular rays spreading from behind a cloud. Light and sea, what more does one need?

Beautiful simplicity: a very cool blue-grey sky with orange crepuscular rays in the distance.

West Woods of Ethie

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It was one of those crazy late-spring days with a clear divide in the weather – everywhere north of the highland boundary fault was meant to get extreme precipitation, while Fife and Angus remained cool and dry. So we walked for a while in the West Woods of Ethie, admiring the lines and shapes of tall beech trees and subtle light and shade under the canopy.

Aberdeenshire Coast: Catterline

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I’d never really explored much of the Aberdeenshire coastline. On Saturday, however – feeling liberated from EV range anxiety – I discovered Catterline, just south of Fowlsheugh and Dunnottar. Towards the end of a beautiful sunny day, with just enough low golden light on the landscape… I had to fly the drone a bit, too.

The coast enjoys many large rocky outcrops (all conglomerate for a few miles around):

Perhaps my favourite shot is one of the more unusual by my standards: quite a thought-out composition of receding layers of rock, with the cliffs behind casting a huge shadow mid-way up one of the rocks, with Todhead Point lighthouse in the distance – near and far, light and dark, mankind and nature all rolled into one:

Todhead Point Lighthouse from Catterline Bay

Not bad going for the little Fuji camera; having set it to f/16 for depth of field, I’m surprised it chose exposures 1/52s and 1/26s at ISO 1600 and 1/60 at ISO 1000 for its HDR bracketing, but the results are excellent, no noise problems even in the shadows.

To finish, a simple statement of peace: nothing much, just sky above, a gentle disturbance in the sea below; all is calm, all is blue:

Peace: blue sky, blue sea

Waterfalls and Mountains

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We spent Saturday afternoon driving around the Tay Forest Park – up to the Mains of Taymouth at Kenmore for lunch then along the south Loch Tay road to the Falls of Acharn – a comparatively steep climb up the side of the gorge and negligible water in the falls, but there was pleasant subtle light making the most of the colours on the surrounding rocks:

Nice rocks (typical Highland semi-pelite) covered with colourful beech leaves and green moss. Shame they’d forgot to turn the water on…

Next stop: just outside Ardeonaig there is a tiny layby where the view of the southern end of Loch Tay opens up. There was pleasant light on the sides of Ben Lawers too:

Still a favoured viewpoint right by the side of the South Loch Tay road – lovely soft mountainside illuminated by gentle light and shadow.

Driving further down the road to Killin, there was an awesome cloud inversion flowing around Ben More in the distance, outside Crianlarich – so I stopped at Lix Toll services and made a panorama of it:

Observant viewers will spot there’s even a tiny fragment of snow remaining toward the far left of the shot on Stob Binnein – not bad for the last week of June!

The final stop of the afternoon was at Edinample Falls along the South Loch Earn road – a small gorge but beautifully shaped with pleasant light through the surrounding trees and a decent amount of water flowing around the rocks.

An overview of the waterfalls at Edinample – lovely sunlight illuminating the rocks nearby

 

In Kinclaven

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I was so awed at the sheer acreage of bluebells (harebells?) at Kinclaven woods on my first visit with friends, I went back a couple of days later with the parents as well. Photos happened. It was still awesome. Also cool – a lovely place to just wander through dappled light amongst the trees. Yay.

Lovely atmosphere:

Great light:

Around Here: testing the Fuji X-T20

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A couple of weeks ago it occurred to me that, with a holiday looming and desires of taking lots of long timelapse photos of an evening, should I wish to take other scenes while timelapse was recording I’d be out of luck with just the one camera. And so on a whim I followed a friend’s advice and bought a second shooter, a Fuji X-T20.

It’s totally amazing – “the Little Camera that Can™” – personified. Diametrically opposite to everything I’ve become accustomed to with the Pentax K-1: custom user-modes do not encapsulate drive modes such as burst-rate, bracketing or intervalometers, just some rudimentary exposure (auto)-ISO settings and things; and the JPEGs are absolutely stunning, with targets defined within colour-space not by intended purpose (“landscape”, “portrait”) but rather by film-emulation.

It’s so good I’ve reworked my entire RAW-processing workflow such that images from both cameras now look like the Fuji’s out-of-camera JPEGs whilst emulating Fuji Provia slide film of old. Quite some drastic changes required over and above the default RawTherapee profile – most notably yellow-greens are dramatically deeper and greener and there’s a “Fuji red” going off. It’s nice to have a point of reference in colour-space, so I know what’s “normal” and where processing deviates from it.

Anyway. Some quick snaps taken one lunchtime stroll through nearby woods:

And my favourite of all, a partial 22º solar halo – the first photo of the walk:

Having just returned from the holiday that prompted the acquisition, it’s interesting just how fast it’s become my primary choice of camera if only for reasons of lighter-weight whilst travelling.

Recovery: Keil’s Den, Fife

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Still feeling very under the weather from a bout of food poisoning, I spent a happy Sunday afternoon walking around Keil’s Den outside Lower Largo, Fife – recommended by the Woodland Trust as a site for seeing bluebells.

It was still a week or two early in the spring for bluebells, but there were a few in evidence, along with a few expanses of unmistakeable white wild garlic.

There’s something pleasantly restorative about a walk in the woods: something about the green hues, dappled light and shade, cool breezes under the trees. It works.

My favourite photo from the afternoon was this strange beech tree – a strong young stem well on its way to producing a new crown of foliage, growing from the remains of an old battered and eroded upright trunk:

Life from old – a young stem growing into a strong crown of foliage from the remains of a much-damaged eroded old tree trunk.

Spittal of Glenshee

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I don’t remember much about the hotel in Spittal of Glenshee – I suspect I saw it a few times when passing by up the glen, but that’s about it. I didn’t have recourse or time to visit the area for a few years, during which time it burned down in 2014 – quite a transformation, leaving the land just fenced-off to decay.

Nice setting:

As an aside, a friend and I were recently nattering about the saturation slider and how there’s always a temptation to overdo it. I mentioned that some images seem to “resonate” at multiple spots across the saturation axis – maybe fully saturated like slide film of old, maybe flatter like colour neg film of old, maybe artistically desaturated, maybe full-on black&white. The above image seems to work at 3 degrees.

Funky ruins:

Around Bangour

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Situated outside Livingston, the psychiatric hospital at Bangour Village was founded in 1906 as Edinburgh District Asylum – one of the first in Scotland to be modelled on a village. In 1918 it housed up to 3000 patients. During the second World War, patients were transferred temporarily to Hartwoodhill Hospital. Around 1924-1930 it gained a multi-denominational church in the centre of the village.

These days the site consists of several listed buildings, most in increasing states of decay – ideal territory for urban exploration.

A few views from ground level:

And a handful of photos made with the drone:

Also see an aerial 360º drone panorama of Bangour I made using Hangar360.

 

The final ward closed in 2004 – worryingly one of those “in my lifetime” things…