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…
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.
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.
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.
For the first time in several years I spent a very happy afternoon wandering around Glen Coe / mostly Glen Etive, revisiting well-known sites – Buachaille Etive Mor from the River Coupall, the head of Loch Etive and the viewpoint above Loch Tulla – the light was stunning, a good test of the Olympus Pen-F camera. I also experimented with the 7-14mm ultrawide lens – it seems the best thing to do is point it straight at the sun and enjoy the flare; composition becomes a matter of seeking strong foregrounds.
It’s been a while. A couple of weekends ago I made it out to my favourite afternoon walk location, Duncan’s Hill and Birnam Hill near Dunkeld. The place was beautiful in the snow – all bright whites and glowing blue skies, trees and light.
Have some snow.
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.
Situated right beside the M9, the Kelpies are a bit of a tourist trap, but it had to be done…
Rather stupidly, I set out with intentions of making long exposure photos of the kelpies – and then found after a few miles down the road that I’d left all my filters in the other camera bag. So, f/22 was deployed, along with a lot of stacking for synthetic long exposures. In one case it took over 60 images median-blended to eliminate the humans milling around. Still, it’s probably better that way – I’m always happier when image data arises from photons than algorithms or localized manipulation.
And some of my favourite shots are from the boardwalk through the marshes on the way back to the carpark.
…it does it properly. A small handful of photos taken late one evening when all around was quiet (apart from some lunatic burning-out the clutch in their Ford to get up the road) and covered in white (and slush) and no light but streetlights…
I took a long scenic detour home today, stopping in Bridge of Earn to search for Cromwell’s Tree having read about it in a book.
It’s easy to find – on the road heading south-west out of town, cross the railway bridge and it’s in the immediately adjacent field to the left.
The tree looks dead, but while the top half is a mass of dead bleached white remains of branches, the bottom third has fresh growth.
It’s known as Cromwell’s Tree as it commemorates the fact that Oliver Cromwell set up cam at Bridge of Earn in 1651. There is no documented evidence proving a direct link, but the tree is old enough to have been present in the 17th Century.
While I was there I found a pleasant reflection of the sky in a flooded field nearby.
Late November, very late autumn – short days of chilly weather and cold light – I set off for a drive through Glen Lyon. I’d not been there for at least five years; felt like ages. Yet very little changes. The river Lyon still burbles on merrily past the Roman Bridge (that isn’t in any way Roman – it dates from the late 18th century); the mountains were all the same shape, with a light dusting of snow hinting at winter yet to come; the Scots Pine trees were still where I remembered them being (and, more to the point, I’ve since learned that they’re a remnant of the Caledonian Forest). There are, however, yet more potholes in the road from the dam at the end of the Glen up and over to Glen Lochay and someone’s plonked a cattle fence across the way. So it goes.
I had some fun with the Pentax 50mm f/1.8 lens, using it for landscapes (not a usual choice for me) and closeup work, even using a hole drilled in the lens-cap to make it into a pinhole.
Ansel had his “Moonrise, Hernandez, Mexico” moment. On the way back along the glen, I had my “Moonrise, Glen Lyon, Scotland” moment: the dullest of grey fading light, a clear view along between the mountains, dark bluey clouds passing rapidly in the distance and the moon rising beyond. Better yet, there were two boulders – one to climb, from which the other made a nice foreground feature. Click. Or more accurately, cliiiiiick, click, cliiiiiiiiiiiick – the sounds of a long exposure HDR sequence (1s, 0.25s, 4s) to capture the contrast on the scene. Categorically the best photo opportunity of the year.
I drove back over Ben Lawers in the pitch black with the rain turning to sleet.
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!
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.
A short study in water – taken on a stroll along the side of Loch Turret.
This is by way of a little tease. The Interwebs are full of photos of this lump of rock taken from a few yards to the right; I thought it would be more interesting to see it through the mouth of an adjacent cave instead.