Autumn Holiday 2016: Heading Home

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Having spent a few days based in my favourite Glen Affric hunting scenery up in the far North, I drove back down Loch Ness. Thinking to take a detour along the A827 (toward Skye), I joined the A87 south only to be met with road-closed signs.

There was a bit of light in the layby while I made my mind up…

The view from the layby also included a classic interaction of mankind and nature – rarely, for me, this is highly manipulated (several partial wind-turbines removed and the remaining one moved across the frame and inverted) but illustrates the concept and contrast quite nicely:

“Speaking to the Sky”
Originally a photo of a few large wind turbines on the slopes of Meall Dubh; made into a bit of a statement.

Given that the first detour was closed, I went a little further along to Loch Cluanie on the road to Skye and had a quick play with the new Nisi filters[amazon], admiring the sunlight on the loch shore:

Perhaps not the best light for landscape work, being late morning / nearly noon, but quite nice and bright sunlight on Loch Cluanie nonetheless.

A rather late lunch was had at my favourite pub in Glencoe, the Clachaig Inn.

The weather turned foul as we travelled through Glencoe, but it made for an interesting timelapse video of the clouds and mist lapping around two of the Three Sisters mountains (Beinn Fhada and Gearr Aonach):

And this is what it looked like shooting it… complete with chamois leather cloth to keep the rain off the camera:

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At Tarbat Ness

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Continuing the third day of my holiday last November, having been to the Reelig Glen in the morning, with the weather still mostly inclement, I went for a nice long drive up to Tarbat Ness by Portmahomack. The lighthouse – the third-tallest in Scotland – was engineered by Robert Stevenson in 1830, a stripy shapely construction standing on cliffs above the Devonian old red sandstone shore, making a great classic scene to photograph.

And this is the more immersive view of what it’s like to be there:

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Chilling with the trees

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On the third day of my holiday last year, the weather took a turn for the worse and my chosen route for the day was closed until Spring, so I went for a walk around the Reelig Glen just outside Inverness.

To be more accurate, the first walk around the glen was favourably interrupted by a very friendly wee collie dog, so I did the whole route a second time with the camera…

It was beautifully relaxing, good for the soul. A place of shapes and light and more shapes and green and autumnal orange colour.

About half-way around the route, just round from crossing the bridge, is Dughall Mor – a Douglas Fir tree that at one time was the tallest in Britain. They do not put any signage by it, except for a very tiny mark on the bark, but I know which it is.

One of these trees used to be the tallest in Britain.
(I know which – they don’t advertise it for safety reasons, save for a very small mark.)

About six years ago, on my first visit to the glen, I also met a small dog and attendant human; the conversation has stuck in my mind, partly for the subject-matter but mostly because of its gentle and slightly surreal nature. A person who knows there’s nothing better to do than to sit on a bench watching the old dog play in the burn. At the time, I wrote about the encounter thus:

The Shadows of Importance

As I came nearer, crossed over a small bridge over a burn, I saw an elderly Westie playing, slowly investigating all around… with his also-eldery designated human sitting on this bench.
And we conversed.
About the important things.
Dogs, trees, and somewhere waaayy down the line, people.
We walked through the woods and he showed me a tree that once was tallest in Britain.
The world of bright city lights was gone, a garish cheapness for and of strangers, long forgotten, as though it never was.
And there was complete serenity.
Some days I’d post an admiration of the forest. Today you get the waypoint where Hamish played and Geoff sat.
Or maybe it’s still an admiration of the forest anyway…

Scene of an encounter

This time of making the circuit around the Reelig Glen, there was no sign of Geoff or Hamish – but I remembered them, and was grateful for all the dogs who love me.

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The light, when the clouds permitted, was glorious – illuminating the foliage beautifully.

Landscape and Geology – an NC500 road-trip

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Back last November I spent a very happy few days staying up North; the first day was spent in Glen Affric (sunrise, trees, water and light).

Photo Map

Photo Map – a long drive around Wester Ross

In the few years since I was last up there, there’s been a concerted push to market the road around the far north of Scotland as an “answer to Route 66” and thereby promote it as a tourist attraction.

The second day of my holiday saw lousy weather, completely overcast and foggy for much of the time. So I spent the day driving around Wester Ross wondering where the scenery had got to… trying not to think of it as the NC500 but actually enjoying several stops along the route that I’ve been to previously.

The first stop was the well-known view from a layby in Glen Dochart, above Kinlochewe to admire the sinuous road:

An obvious scene: the road wending through Glen Dochart toward Kinlochewe (not depicted: Kinlochewe, because of the mist).

Pity about the mist…

A little further along on the way through Kinlochewe are two mountains – Beinn Eighe to the left and Meallan Ghobhar and Coille na Dubh Chlaise to the right. We pulled off the A-road and Doglet had his breakfast more or less directly on the Loch Maree fault-line whilst admiring the quartzite rock strata.

There wasn’t much to be said for the views across Loch Maree, although the contrast of dull grey skies and warm autumnal orange and yellow colours was pleasant.

Some years ago, there was a TV documentary, a former politician’s search for the most natural woodland in the UK. After much searching around down south in the New Forest, he came north and explored Caledonian Forest remnants, finally finishing up on an island in Loch Maree – a rather bizarre arrangement of an island with a lochan with another island inside that – on which he stated the trees were least likely to have been touched by mankind. There is an obvious viewpoint, a small section of beach, at Slattadale toward the north-west end of Loch Maree, from which the group of islands can be seen.

Of all the photos I made during that day, this was perhaps the most classical landscape, in that I had the idea for these photos – the location, leading lines of foreground boulders, large expanse of silvery water and Slioch in the distance – planned in my mind for ages before revisiting the area.

What you don’t see is how, while I was making these photos (long exposures, totalling a minute’s exposure, focus-stacked) there was another photographer sitting 20yd away, cooking his morning breakfast – so the photos fail to include the clouds of fragrant bacon and fish smoke billowing past the camera…

Speaking of lunch, mine happened at Badachro, at the Inn. Highly recommended – everyone loved Doglet, which is a good start, and the burger was tasty as ever. Mostly the thing I like most is how the coastline is just like Plockton – west-coast rocky sea-lochs and seaweed – but without actually being Plockton that everyone else flocks to see.

And this is what it’s really like at Badachro:
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On a previous trip I had explored as far as Poolewe but not had a chance to go further; this time I stopped off at Loch Tollaidh to admire the rocky outcrops across the water (Lewisian Gneiss and other igneous rock).

Classic Wester Ross landscape – huge lumps of Lewisian gneiss, beside Loch Tullie

Signs of industry: on the shore of Loch Tollaidh is a small jetty, presumably a put-in for boats to go inspect the small salmon farm. That and the remains of a very dead boat, wood bleached inland, caught my attention:

On travelling up the coast to Mellon Udrigle (what a wonderful name!) I was struck by the view across the Wester Ross Marine Protected Area to the mountains on the horizon on the mainland. On the left, a bit of misty cloud drapes over the top of Beinn Ghobhlach; to the right, there’s more mist flowing over Sail Mhor but the huge bulk of An Teallach was completely hidden behind the cloud.

A wide-angle panorama: low-lying cloud (with a bit of precipitation) and mist flowing over Sail Mhor – the full bulk of An Teallach is completely hidden in the cloud beyond.
The mountain on the far left is Beinn Ghobhlach.

By the time I got back onto main roads, with a very long drive ahead, the light was fading fast toward dusk and the blue hour and clouds in front were thick and closing in fast, so I made one final photo for the day by the side of Little Loch Broom and scarpered fast.

Lots of mist in the distance, travelling the A832 past Beinn Ghobhlach.
I was rather glad to get back in the car and head off before the weather got really bad!

Around Glen Affric 3: Morning Sunrise

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I first visited Glen Affric in September 2006, more or less 10 years ago. Not long after, I discovered the joy of standing at my favourite bench watching the sun rise behind the distant mountains, its light casting shadows of the trees on the mist. Since then I’ve been longing for a second chance at the same scene – and this year, with a bit of good timing, I think I managed it.

And another behind-the-scenes 360-pano selfie of what it’s like to be there…

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Around Glen Affric: water

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I had a short holiday at the start of last November, a few days spent in Glen Affric. There are several aspects why it’s my favourite part of the planet, but for the purposes of this post, we consider the role of water in shaping a landscape, eroding its way through rocks to form river, gorges and waterfalls.

First, the impressive 150-foot drop of Plodda Falls from the top:

Second, some of the cascades in the River Affric, part of the way around the River Walk, rich autumn colours glowing in the morning sunlight:

And finally, a couple of 360-degree panoramas, partly to offer a behind-the-scenes view – they take a little while to download once clicked:

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Along Loch Tay

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It’s a classic viewpoint – at the head of Loch Tay standing on the shores at Kenmore, looking down the length of the loch past the Crannog and island to mountains in the distance. Even without dramatic contrasty sunlight, it didn’t disappoint.

For the record, these were both 8-second exposures, around f/4.5 and ISO 400 using a Nisi circular polariser filter to balance the light between sky and reflection. Both images are a pair stacked for noise-reduction.

Around the Black Mount

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Detail of blades of grass poking throuhg a frozen Lochan na h’Achlaise, Rannoch Moor.

At the end of November I spent a happy Saturday afternoon driving out to the Black Mount area in Rannoch Moor, with photos in mind.

Didn’t help that I left the main camera battery at home in the charger, so was limited to the spare. Well, it makes one think when even turning the camera on to compose through the EVF uses finite battery life, especially in the cold. Lots of “pre-visualising” going on to keep the film-throwback photographer purists happy.

There were plenty of cars zooming along the A82 but a little stroll out into the bogs resulted in some nice landscape.

The crowning joy of the photographic excursion, however, was the total cliche scene of the Buachaille from the River Coupall. It’s sufficiently well-known that folks groan when it appears in photo-club competitions. The composition is more or less fixed, with varying extremity of weather conditions providing the value-additions to the photo.

This time, I spotted a little wisp of mist coming up Glencoe as I turned off down Glen Etive. There were only two other folks at the location; they said it was their second attempt that day as, on the way down the glen, there had been 20-30 folk milling around.

Funny how such an iconic landscape location still has people who will shoot it in suboptimal light.

We took a few photos, and dusk fell, with glorious shades of warm purple tints and an orange sky.

My temporary companions departed, leaving just me – well into post-sunset dusk blue-hour – at which point the wisp of mist rounded the base of the mountain underlining it in white to match the waterfalls in the river. And that is the shot of the day.

Buachaille Etive Mor from the River Coupall, Glen Etive

Stob Dearg – Buachaille Etive Mor from the River Coupall, Glen Etive

The Least Amount of Landscape

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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…

The Falls of Acharn

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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:

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Loch Lomond: At Inversnaid

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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.

Loch Chon Reflections

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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.

Around Ardkinglas

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Driving home form the Argyll Photo-Walk, along the shores of Loch Fyne, I couldn’t help but stop to appreciate the golden evening light on the mountains surrounding Glenkinglas.

The Olympus Pen-F has a hi-res mode, which is a bit of a mixed blessing for use in the landscape. On the one hand, it constructs an 80-megapixel image never requiring more than 20 megapixels resolution from the lens. However, it does it by interleaving with sub-pixel super-resolution, for a total of 8 source frames per image, which results in dithering patterns around moving subjects. In the case of water, this can be mitigated by using a long exposure; in the case of clouds, much longer. For the photo showing Ardkinglas house across the water, I had an ND8 filter to make it a 1-second exposure. Unfortunately this introduced some serious colour-casts – so new filters have been ordered!

PhotoWalk 2016: Dubh Loch

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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.