On the Way to St Fillan’s

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A few months ago now, I spent a happy Saturday afternoon driving around the countryside – visited some old haunts and refreshed memories. I had it in mind to spend some time shooting the well-known statue Still by Rob Mulholland in Loch Earn at St Fillan’s, but was more taken by the landscape en route – a little mist rising off a forest, clouds so low they obscure the outlines of the mountains.

So the majority of these photos were actually taken whilst parked in a layby off the A85. But I couldn’t possibly admit to that. 😉

Around the Hermitage

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The Hermitage, by Dunkeld, has a very attractive woodland walk by the River Braan. At one time it used to boast the tallest tree in the Britain, although that honour has since moved to other forests. The Black Linn waterfall and gorge are most impressive.

Loch Rannoch Precipitation

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“Through sepia showers and photo-flood days”, in the words of Runrig. It certainly felt like that – all the best scenes from an afternoon’s trip around Loch Rannoch seem to have featured water, preferably precipitating in the distance, most probably raining on me! Certainly makes for dramatic landscape photos.

Donner und Blitzen

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Wonderful amazing weather last night. The thunderstorm started around midnight, resumed sparking silently but continuously in the distance from 2 to 3am and then restarted yet again around 8-9am with jubilant thundercracks and resounding booming rumbles echoing off the clouds.

These photos were made around 2.30am – just the distant lightning illuminating the clouds.

Epic.

Around Loch Rannoch

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It remains one of my favourite parts of Highland Perthshire – with walks in Caledonian Forest to enjoy, beautiful landscape around Loch Rannoch, and this most recent discovery – as I was driving I saw a little round fuzzy grey/black creature trundling along the verge; when I realised it was a badger, well, the car just pulled its own handbrake on so I could get out and say hello. On talking to a few passers-by, it transpires they’re well known, living in a sett under an old pine tree’s partially excavated roots.

Wildlife is awesome.

Sunset Timelapse

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Further experiments making timelapse videos – this time the sunset looking across Strathearn to Crieff – from my favourite spot for hunting aurora.

The second has Ursa Major emerging, one star at a time, over the course of 50 minutes around midnight.

Both were taken using the Olympus Pen-F with its built-in intervalometer – the first with the 12-60mm f/2.8 PRO (four-thirds) lens, the second with the 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO (micro-four-thirds) lens – but the RAW ORF files were reprocessed using RawTherapee for better tone control, the results interpolated to generate 1500 frames (1 minute at 25fps) using a custom Julia script and merged with ffmpeg.

The audio is a minute of the T-in-the-Park festival recorded from a mile away with vocals added by sheep in nearby fields. A quick frequency analysis in Audacity shows the thumping bass peaks at around 58Hz (A1)…

T-in-the-Park festival from a mile away - frequencies peaking at 58Hz

T-in-the-Park festival from a mile away – frequencies peaking at 58Hz

Falls of Bruar Revisited

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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.)

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.

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.

In the Woods

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The Black Woods of Rannoch are a particularly favourite stroll. One of the Caledonian Forest reserves (the only one I know in Perthshire), they boast many native and rare flora species – Scots Pine, birch, rowans, alder, willow and juniper and lichens and fungi – as well as being home to wild deer (as I discovered when a stag suddenly trundled right across the path barely 20yd in front of me).

Interaction with mankind is a different matter. There’s something about the flow and depth of river water in the weir that creeps me out, but the text on the last sign-post says:

The Black Wood of Rannoch Canals

Before you you can see a ditch cut through the heather. This dates from around 1800 and once formed part of a York Building Company scheme to remove timber from the Black Wood of Rannoch. In order to extract the logs they devised a system of canals (the ditch before you was the lowest of the three canals).

The scheme provided a great deal of work and employed most of the men and women of the district. Over four miles of canals had to be dug using picks and shovels. The trees then had to be felled before being floated along the canals and then down a chute to Loch Rannoch. The logs were tied together in rafts for the journy down the loch to Kinloch Rannoch, then sent singly down the Rivers Tummel and Tay to their final destination at Perth and Dundee.

If the project had been a success, the Black Wood of Rannoch would have ben completely destroyed. In the event, the plan to float the logs down the rivers did not work. The scheme was abandoned, and the wood saved.

Employment just does justify desecration. The woods are too special.

Olympus Pen-F: first excursion photos

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I’ve not wasted time before getting out and about with the new camera. I saw a photo on flickr of the sea stack at Muchalls on the Aberdeenshire coast, near Stonehaven, which prompted a visit to explore the area and drive through lots of scenery. Unfortunately the path down to the beach was too slippy and muddy, so I settled for a higher vantage-point overlooking the rocky beach.

This was taken using an Olympus 12-60mm f/2.8-f/4 four-thirds lens with adapter, circular polariser, ND4 and grad-ND4 filters.

Rocky coastline and small sea-stacks at Muchalls, Aberdeenshire

Rocky coastline and small sea-stacks at Muchalls, Aberdeenshire

I continued to drive all around the A93 loop from near Stonehaven to Banchory and Ballater – the road lined with favourable Scots pine trees. The sun set as I was passing the Muir of Dinnet. This sunset silhouette was made using my old Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens:

The real delight of the day’s drive was rattling down Glenshee in the dusk. It was -2C outside; with the light having faded, the sky was a beautiful shade of cobalt blue, against which the silvery white of the pure snow capping the mountains was simply breathtaking.

Sirius Rising over Leacann Dubh and Creag Leacach – I know it was Sirius because by the end of the combined 64-second exposure, Orion was well visible to its right.

It feels so good to be back enjoying the landscape again.