Around Here

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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.

Edinburgh Fog

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On Sunday, on a whim, I went down to Edinburgh. As always, the city was fairly heaving but I revisited one of my favourite locations – the Radical Road along the Salisbury Crags, which affords an excellent view from Blackford Hill round to the Parliament buildings.

So I tested the Pen-F’s timelapse video ability for the first time. The camera makes it a breeze: set up the scene (lots of filters to cope with the lighting), set it in aperture-priority mode, 300 frames at 5s intervals, push the button and off it goes. And nature provided! – simply point the camera at the city and watch the sea haar roll in, great low clouds of misty fog, obscuring the castle within minutes.

First time I’ve made a 4K video… unfortunately the results from the camera weren’t quite up to the quality I expected, so I reprocessed all the RAW ORF files on the notebook in bulk (using RawTherapee) and rendered the official video myself with ffmpeg.

I also made a wide panorama – 5 frames each in 80-megapixel high resolution mode; lots of image data, nicely stitched in Hugin as usual.

Gardening is People

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Some decades ago, my folks were planning their garden; a friend of the family who happened to be an old gardener recommended two things: a mahonia bush and a snake-bark maple. The latter is gone but the mahonia remains, decades on.

Everywhere I consider home has had at least one mahonia – it’s a measure of garden completeness. Today I planted one in the back mud-patch and thought of Tom of old.

Neighbours from Argyll days once recommended an Osmanthus. Today I planted one and thought of them.

The willow tree came directly from friends in Argyll as well and was planted a few months ago. (I’m not convinced it’s thriving, however!)

It wouldn’t be the first place I’ve lived to have had hebes in the borders either.

So. That’s the heart of a gardener, is other people remembered.

Around Glen Etive

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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.

Monadhliath Memories

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A long time ago I was privileged to own a small bolthole property with an IV2 postcode – my own little patch of the proper Highlands. I visited it every fortnight, tended it well, and eventually couldn’t spare the time to keep it up as base moved beyond a reasonable commute distance.

A couple of weekends ago I revisited the area for the first time in years.

Some things have changed: a little traffic-light-controlled bridge is no longer there as the B851 has been slightly widened in parts; some of the surrouding hillsides have been clear-felled of their trees. But otherwise the lie of the land remains largely mercifully untouched. Strathnairn, with its rocky crags and landscapes of naught but light and water, still exudes a permeating emptiness – a present absence – that turns the role of viewer on its head, asking you “so what do you stand for?”.

Of course, my other favourite afternoon escape route was a few miles up the road to the comparative civilisation of Dores. That hasn’t changed much either. The view down Loch Ness is just as impressive, and the solar halo just hanging in the sky was both awe-inspiring and uplifting.

There’s a chain, that binds us all in lives of wonder
There’s a chain, hold it closely as you go
Let this name be your family and your shelter
Take this chain all your days, don’t let go.

Buchanty Spout

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Sedimentary conglomerate rocks, a bend in the River Almond and some nice late afternoon light.

I’ve never explored this area particularly, but on a whim having passed through the hamlet of Buchanty the previous day, with a day to spare and remembering someone in the local photographic society having posted a nice photo of the Spout, I thought I’d have a look.

Even on an average day the flow was quite awesome – a small gorge, but deep water flowing fast along its way like a bubbling jacuzzi.

Olympus Pen-F in high-resolution mode; circular polarizer, an ND8 and grad-ND4 filters and HDR bracketing to control the lighting.

Birnam Hill: Details

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A handful more photos from an afternoon stroll around Birnam Hill – little things that caught my eye. There was a small burn flowing down one of the paths, mostly covered in amazing semi-fractured ice crystals; patterns abound.

Ordinary Landscape

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The other day, we had a proponent of “creative landscape photography” presenting at the photographic society. His results were outstanding. I even approved of some of his philosophy, which is saying something.

But … some of his decisions in the execution of that philosophy seemed off.

It’s great to hear someone ignoring the maxim “get it right in camera”, espousing instead the idea of “getting good data at the scene” and affirming the role of post-processing to polish the result instead. I believe strongly in the very same thing myself.

It seems strange that such a philosophy would lead to rejoicing in a camera’s dynamic range – no matter claiming to have recovered 4 stops from the shadows, it would still have been done better by HDR at the scene – where the data comes from photons working in the hardware’s optimum performance zone.

It seems strange that one would criticize such a camera for “not seeing the same way we do”, and go on to say that we need to enhance the impression of depth by using lower contrast in the distance.
The sensor’s response curve is smooth; it will accurately reflect the relative contrast in areas by distance. The only way it would not is if one’s processing were to actively include tonemapping with localized contrast equalization. Left to its own devices, the result will accurately reflect what it was like to be there – one of the greater compliments a landscape photographer could receive.

The problem is not with the landscape; it’s with the way that photography should aspire to relate to the landscape. “Creative” seems to be a euphemism for multiplying and enhancing every aspect, be it strong foreground (make it a yet stronger perspective with a tilt lens), contrasty light (more contrast slider), colour (still more saturation and vibrace to breaking point) and so on. The results create impact but without story or message; visual salt without an underpinning of a particular taste.

Of course we know that “realism” is a phantom. It’s true that no camera will capture quite the same as anyone sees. However, let me introduce a new word: believability, precisely the quality that one could have been there at the same time. That seems like a valid goal.

Have some believable landscape images – they mean a little to me; that suffices.

Snowy Strathearn

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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.

Hunting Kelpies

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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.

When it snows…

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…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…

Cromwell’s Tree, Bridge of Earn

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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.

Bluebells

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It’s been a slightly busy year; so busy I’m still catching up with photos made in April / May time. Much longer and it’ll suit next year instead!

Around the middle of May a group of friends and I went for a photo-stroll from Crieff out along Lady Mary’s Walk, in search of bluebells. We found some. I shot some with an infrared filter, just to see what would happen – it seems to have rendered the colours with a very olde-worlde vintage faded effect.