Autumn Years: Abandoned A93 Road, Craighall Gorge

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On a recent excursion elsewhere, a friend tipped me off to the existence of the gorge at Craighall, through which runs the remains of the abandoned A93 road from Blairgowrie to Glenshee.

It’s funny to think that the bridge was constructed in 1994 and the road decommissioned in 2008, both of which are well within my lifetime – and given how I visited Glenshee several times in my early years having just moved up to Perth in 2004/5, it’s entirely possible I might have used the old road unawares.

These days it’s little more than a 40-minute saunter for dog walkers – almost like wandering through a woodland but with crash-barriers beside and the occasional painted stripe of a white line former road marking peeking through the inch-deep mud and moss.

With the leaves turning gold in autumn, it’s a post-urban delight in its own way.

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.

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 🙂

 

Birks of Aberfeldy

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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!

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:

when a landscape location goes sour

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I don’t know how to tag some of these photos: on the one hand, a place that’s been a good walk in the trees for over a decade, but on the other, one that’s now showing the tarnish of human influence. Landscape photographer’s idyll or sad anger?

The Falls of Bruar present several well-known scenes. My own story is of having bought a tripod to do justice to a particular view and then using it to shoot a “hole in the ground in failed light” instead, thus getting one of my most-popular photos on flickr. I’ve been back probably 10 times over more years and enjoyed the stroll up the side of the gorge, admired the rocks, watched the three waterfalls doing their thing.

First there’s the regular clichĂ© photo approaching the lower bridge – everyone gets the view from the top of the gorge opposite the lower bridge; I flew the drone down into the gorge and shot it from more on a level with the natural arch:

Nice rocks – psammite and semi-pelite as most of the Highlands, with the shear strata arising from the end of the Loch Tay fault-line.

Around the corner, there’s a viewpoint amongst the rocks of the second waterfall above the lower bridge:

Rising above the gorge one can see the pine trees lining the Bruar Water – it also shows how the middle cascades extend much further upstream than might be expected from the compressed perspective of ground level:

Abstract view of the lower Falls of Bruar

However, this visit was far from happy. Apart from some offensive uncouth ned muttering “hope you lose your drone” as he passed by, and the hordes of random unwelcome people thinking they were entitled to pester the dog, there are massive botanical problems: the two bridges have been closed so the path up the right side of the gorge is inaccessible due to tree works – possibly because of disease although I’m unconvinced this is the whole reason.

Bridge closed

Walking up the left side of the gorge instead, the area is infested with non-native invasive rhododendron bushes; the Forestry on the adjacent hillsides has been harvested leaving a horrendous unsightly barren landscape; the burns and tributaries beside the path are in a dire state of disrepair also.

Who wants to walk along here?

This is the trouble with well-known landscape locations; as photographers we like the illusion of wilderness, or at least that places are natural. Bruar has become no more than an ill-kempt garden with a water-feature running through the rockery. The light and shade and calming deep greens are no more to be seen.

I’m giving it a decade to recover before revisiting.

Sma’ Glen: liminal landscape

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Many years ago, as I was buying my first ever house in Perth, I remember the solicitor advocating the Sma’ Glen as a landscape to explore and photograph. He wasn’t wrong, but it’s taken over a decade to really start to explore it properly.

First there’s the natural appreciation of the place – light and landscape.

Taken right above the Highland Boundary Fault line looking north to the Sma’ Glen, Dallick House and plantation on the right and Roman Signal Station just visible as concentric rings in the bracken above a small burn.

Then comes the realization, due to geology, that the incredibly lumpy landscape is actually due to the Highland Boundary Fault running right through it – here, from left to right, along the line of the base of the hills and mountains. Lowlands beneath and behind, Highlands beyond to the north.

The second realization, due to heritage, is that the Romans had a series of “glen-blocker” forts along the Gask Ridge, of which one was situated here, at Fendoch. They even had a Signal Station across the road(!) – more accurately, across the fault line too – to alert the fort to incoming invasion from the north.

These days the fort itself is no great shakes – a few stone walls remaining and some faint outlines of rectangular structures beyond – and the Signal Station is a couple of concentric rings and a hint of more structure in the bracken.

Of course the final realization is thanks to the drone: rather that just the “intimate landscape” features within a few meters of one’s nose, one becomes aware of the landscape on a different scale of multiple miles and the way it’s divided up by roads and habitations (and how those have changed over the millenia).

Roads slicing up the landscape: taken above the Roman Signal Station at the foot of the Sma’ Glen, looking south-east over the Highland Boundary Fault to Fendoch Roman Fort (between the pylons and Stroness hill in the distance) and thence along Glen Almond.

Lone Ash Tree, Glen Devon

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Thanks to my friends Fox in the Snow Photography over on Facebook for their permission to steal one of “their” favourite trees in Glen Devon as a photo location this past weekend. Less gratitude for the attendant weather, however!

On approach, leaving the car across the road, there was quite a white-out blizzard – snow blowing up the glen, everything shades of grey, low clouds. There’s a whole hillside lurking behind the tree here, not that you’d notice:

First things first, I established it’s an Ash, Fraxinus excelsior. That probably explains some of the funky characterful shapes.

I had a bit of fun exploring the various compositions around the tree. The obvious thing is to get the whole tree in the frame, from sufficiently low on the ground to obscure the road behind, letting the visible grass merge, flowing, into the background.

One idea I’d had was to emphasize the curve of the split trunk by using it to fill the frame, leaving the branches and twigs flying around in the wind during a long exposure, Medusa-style:

Fortunately the spooky mood didn’t last long, as the weather was coming and going in alternating waves of white-out cloud and brilliant sunshine flowing over the tree.

Above the Highland Boundary Fault

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About 3-4 years ago, I first visited Birnam Hill. Made it around Duncan’s Hill to the south and through the woods… As I walked a path between old and new forestry, I wondered why there was a sharp drop down almost a metre to the level of the new trees.

Over subsequent visits I took a few photos, came back and took geotagged photos, all around the same area, went to the BGS, imported bedrock data via KML into Google Earth, correlated with the photos… After a couple of years I’m confident that the dip in the landscape is evidence of the Highland Boundary Fault – a line that runs all the way from Arran and Comrie to the south-west, through Stare Dam and Rohallion Loch and lodge, up along this dip between the trees and away to the east before heading off north-east to near Stonehaven. From a suitable angle it looks like someone’s taken a bicycle tyre and run it over the landscape, causing an impression relative to the surrounding hills and mountains.

Apart from that, the scene from Stair Bridge Viewpoint is highly photogenic and while I’ve made several photos of the view south and east since, I’ve always wanted to fly a drone along the line of the fault.

A few days ago, the dream came true: a perfect clear dry bright sunny winter’s day, snow lying on the ground, low sun illuminating the ground, all quiet and calm.

A clear winter’s day:

You have to be standing all-but on the HBF to take this:

A selfie, of sorts: straight down landing on Stair Bridge:

I managed a couple of runs from near Rohallion Lodge up toward the A9 with the drone, spliced them together into a fly-by to give an impression of the topology.

And a still photo (I still shoot them! – but mostly HDR panoramas…) looking east from above the cusp of the saddle landform between old and new forests:


To wrap up the afternoon, there was some lovely light on an avenue of beech trees, walking back to the main road:

Bucket-list Item: CHECKED!

The First Morning of Winter

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I spent the morning of Dec 22 – the first day of winter – up Kinnoull Hill. There was beautiful mist rising from the River Tay as it meanders through the Carse of Gowrie.

I experimented with a few new compositions too: semi-abstract views of the hills of north Fife, the motorway/A90 junction and the river north of Perth as well.

My favourite two images were the fairly conventional view from above the cliffs, looking past the folly along the Carse of Gowrie. It’s not that comfortable a location to shoot – to get a clear view of the tower, one has to stand in a gorse bush…

A Sunday Afternoon Escape

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A few photos from an afternoon escape in August – one of my favoured routes, starting with the trek from Amulree along Glen Quaich – a moderately long stretch becoming quite a tricky road, steep with S-bends:

As always, the view from the moor along the top was awesome – particularly with ominous dark clouds – I experimented a bit with a variable-ND (crossed-circular-polariser) filter to lengthen the exposures up to 30s:

From there, descending yet more wiggly bends on the way toward Kenmore, there’s a tiny track off the road to a small carpark nestling in amongst the heather. The hillside above there affords a glorious view over the Appin of Dull – there was even a bit of light on Loch Tay looking the other way as well:

My Strathearn

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I’m very fond of the views along the length of Strathearn – from the Knock at Crieff or above Monzie joinery on the A822 road looking west, the view to overlapping hills in the distance is deeply pleasant.

This is an unashamed dump of a load of photos made over the course of two strolls up and down Torlum Hill outside Crieff – the first mid-afternoon with a variable-ND / polariser filter, the second immediately afterwards with a regular 2-stop circular polariser instead. The same technique has been applied to all  – auto whitebalance and handheld HDR with a 1EV bracket either way. All are presented here in chronological order to compare the difference the light and a proper filter make in the landscape.

On the way back home after strolling up and down the hill, I saw a colourful Earth’s Shadow (aka Belt of Venus) developing, just as I happened to be passing one of my favoured characterful trees outside Muthill.

Sunrise at Kinnoull Hill

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Early one morning in August I set off up Kinnoull Hill in Perth; a 40-minute stroll through the woods and I arrived at the top just in time for sunrise.

There are a couple of classic viewpoints, although juggling foreground foliage is not the easiest. This is the view closer to the tower with a hint of sunlight behind the hill, a line of light streaking round to illuminate some of the yellow trees below:

Sunrise behind Kinnoull Hill, with the River Tay running along the Carse of Gowrie into the distance

And this is a little further back, the sun having risen illuminating the whole Carse of Gowrie and River Tay, sky still shades of yellow and pink:

A classic view of the tower and River Tay from Kinnoull Hill, Perth

Walking back through the woods was rather pleasant too – lots of dappled sunlight on the trees.

This was one of the first photo-sets I processed using Affinity Photo Pro on the iPad. Loving the colour and tone already!