I used to make a point of closeup nature photos, simplifying the complexity of plant structure down to a few lines, in dull light. For the first time in ages, I spent most of yesterday afternoon with just the old Helios 58mm lens attached, walking around, seeing what could be seen.
Didn’t expect ladybirds to feature at this time of year.
Sometimes I have to tell it like it is. Dunnet Forest is one of the least pleasant collections of trees I’ve ever had the displeasure of walking through. From start to finish, a total misuse of the land.
Within 50yd of the carpark are multiple signs warning owners to pick up after their dogs and to use the bin, even with the emotional manipulation that excrement left around could blind a child.
The woodland itself is awful – monoculture spruce with barren lack of undergrowth.
The only burn I saw was a stretch of ~70yd of stagnant scum-covered sludge, vibrant orange with industrial pollution.
There is a reek of unjust hypocrisy about the whole affair: one cannot help but think, even if there is some credibility in the idea of a small kid putting something off the forest floor in their eye, by surface area and decay-rate alone, they would be far more likely to encounter danger in the polluted stream than from anything left behind by a dog – which would, if anything, go some way to re-fertilizing the abused ground beneath the trees.
Toward the end of the ill-defined loop route are several sculptures carved out of the remains of some of the tree trunks. You’ll have had yer entertainment then – but not your walk in nature.
I could not escape fast enough.
A few weeks ago, I spent a happy Saturday afternoon strolling around the Birks of Aberfeldy, testing the newly acquired Fuji X-T20.
For context, a general landscape of the lower end of the gorge with the Moness water flowing around rocks and pebbles in the riverbed:
The Moness river flowing over rocks and pebbles
For consistency, everything else was shot coupled with the Helios 58mm f/2 lens using the Acros+Yellow black&white film emulation mode and ISO 200.
Some abstract tree foliage patterns:
Details of tiny flowers closeup:
Of all the mini-waterfalls up the left side of the gorge, I’m particularly fond of the way the water flows over the moss on this one:
Statue of Robert Burns sitting on a bench:
Scultpure of Robert Burns sitting on a bench at the Birks of Aberfeldy
Shortly after these photos were made, the heavens opened – a huge cumulonimbus cloud the shape of the Starship Enterprise disgorged itself over a lot of Highland Perthshire, flooding the roads in Aberfeldy itself; as I was walking down the north side of the gorge, it was quite disconcerting feeling the sandy gravel getting washed away in the channels underfoot. Fun fun!
Helios 58mm f/2 lens wide open but with a pinhole drilled in the lens-cap, giving an effective aperture of about f/30 (almost two stops narrower than the lens’s own aperture scale). This was just slow enough to allow a reasonable hand-held exposure of the sun behind iridescent clouds, although it still took a lot of care to retrieve detail in the highlights.
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.
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!
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.
When in doubt, grab one old manual prime lens, stick it on the camera and go for a stroll around the South Inch in Perth. This is the first of a small handful of posts of things that caught my eye one lunchtime, starting with the obvious view of St Leonard’s in the Fields Church of Scotland across the playing fields.