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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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…
Simple stuff – photos of a hedge while out walking one evening – but a plethora of species of flora to be found and enjoyed.
With a couple of hours to spare on Sunday afternoon, I revisited the Falls of Bruar. Even on a grotty wet day there were plenty of opportunities, around the lower bridge.
It’s at least the 8th time I’ve been there – but the geology is impressive as always with the natural arch formed by the river eroding the local rock (mostly psammite, as with much of the Highlands).
Some experiments with Live Composite mode on the Olympus Pen-F, as well as the usual (for me) high-resolution mode; everything taken using a circular polariser and ND4 filter for longer exposure times. Having made initial RAW conversions using RawTherapee, everything has been passed through LuminanceHDR to even-out the white-balance and tonemap for better image tone. (In cases where there’s only a small area of light in the frame, such as these flowing waterfalls, the Pattanaik algorithm can give interesting high-contrast results – set the gamma to about 0.3 and the frame turns mostly black with just the highlights remaining.)
A short study in water – taken on a stroll along the side of Loch Turret.
A final pair of images from the day’s trip around Loch Rannoch – the first taken at the start as I was setting off, the second toward the end of the day while I was hoping for a glamorous sunset but enjoyed a beautiful subtle sundown instead.
The view of the folly on the Eilean nam Faoileag crannog in Loch Rannoch is available on my landscape photography site, ShinyPhoto.
This one isn’t so much about the water as the mountain, Schiehallion. Back in 1774, its regular shape and relatively isolated location led to it being used in the famous experiment by Mason and Maskelyne to determine the value of the gravitational constant, big-G, and the density of the Earth.
Certainly it sits fairly impressively in the landscape.
A couple of photos from around Dundee Law:
looking south across the River Tay
The radio transmitter on top of the Law:
Looking west over Lochee, with the Menzieshill Water Tower and Camperdown Jute Mill across to Perthshire hills in the distance:
Sony NEX-7, 2-stop circular polarizer filter, HDR +/-1 EV.
I walked maybe half a mile along the pebbled shores of Loch Ryan, attempting to make interesting photos in classical landscape style. Of this kind of scene, one particular favourite survived the editing purge:
However, the photo I favour most from this afternoon was a serendipitous find, a result of some gentle urban exploration. Just standing in the doorway of this ruined building, all the light through the windows and lines and curves somehow fell together into a classic composition, a celebration of abandonment in grunge:
It also looks radically different in colour:
