A few photos from a trip to Glen Lyon in autumn. An ideal route for an afternoon walk-with-Dog took in 3 distinct kinds of woodland: artificial monoculture (spruce etc, clear barren ground) (fortunately being felled with a view to replacement with native trees), some birch and oak, and (another artificial) an avenue of beech trees.
Anthropocene influence:
Very natural native flora basking in the golden light:
An avenue of beech trees looking quite spooky
Still feeling very under the weather from a bout of food poisoning, I spent a happy Sunday afternoon walking around Keil’s Den outside Lower Largo, Fife – recommended by the Woodland Trust as a site for seeing bluebells.
It was still a week or two early in the spring for bluebells, but there were a few in evidence, along with a few expanses of unmistakeable white wild garlic.
There’s something pleasantly restorative about a walk in the woods: something about the green hues, dappled light and shade, cool breezes under the trees. It works.
My favourite photo from the afternoon was this strange beech tree – a strong young stem well on its way to producing a new crown of foliage, growing from the remains of an old battered and eroded upright trunk:
Life from old – a young stem growing into a strong crown of foliage from the remains of a much-damaged eroded old tree trunk.
One of my favoured locations for a quick hour’s stroll in Argyll is Glen Nant, south of the village of Taynuilt; in particular the Ant Trail which leads you through a small Caledonian forest – not very reserved as many of the trees were felled a couple of centuries ago to fire the furnaces at Bonawe, but it seems folks have repented a bit since then.
Herewith, some more back-to-earth simple landscapes: Ben Cruachan from Glen Nant and a couple of intimate landscape studies.
One of my favourite walks around the local area is the Oak Walk – running along the edge of a large field, it gets beautiful evening sunlight and has some characterful trees
One or two local folk have populated it with wooden sculptures, for amusement factor
And the surrounding paths are well populated with wild raspberries, brambles and even willowherb/fireherb looking pretty in the light.
At the start of October, I spent a happy Saturday on a photo-walk organized by a friend around Inverary in Argyll, the group numbering nearly 20 folks.
It was quite a day – over 7 miles walked, folks socialized with, the town and surrounding landscapes investigated.
We started with a trip up the bell-tower and the adjacent All Saints’ Scottish Episcopal Church in the middle of town:
After that, we visited Inverary Jail – quite interesting to get a glimpse of the conditions folks lived in. A friendly guard posed for us:
As we were walking around to the castle for lunch, there was a burst of sunlight over the landscape. A few days prior to the excursion I had discovered an old Pentax film camera in a storage box, and loaded it with film and acquired an extra 50mm prime lens for it, along with an adapter to the Sony NEX-7. So this is Strone Point and the top of Glen Kinglas, on an old 50mm f/1.7 “nifty fifty” Pentax PK-fit lens:
We had lunch in the Inverary Castle tearooms:
Inverary Castle
The afternoon was spent climbing up Dun na Cuaiche. I was impressed to see what an effect the geology has on the area, as (igneous) felsite hills to the north of the town give way to psammite (partially metamorphosed sedimentary) bedrock along the shore of Loch Fyne. The watchtower is a folly – the only thing it looks out over is the castle itself, affording no real protection from anyone else feeling like invading!
A selection of photos, using a walk around Birnam Hill to test the new mobile and its camera.
Things one finds in woodland: details of a feather; broken fences; abandoned jackets (don’t ask!) and chunky rocks (semi-pelite, near the Highland Boundary Fault).
It’s been a while since I made photos of closeups in the woods – and for the most part, last time around I avoided contrasty light for the purpose too. Last night, I took a single prime lens (my favourite Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 of old) and one of my favoured strolls over Craigie Hill around the golf course, seeing what there was to be seen under the trees…
No doubt this is one of the oldest conundrums, generally long-since answered. The conventional approach is that black&white is meant to be an end in itself (a choice made at the time of shooting rather than an option or fallback in processing), in order that the eye be drawn to forms and shapes and textures, appreciated for their own sake without the distractions of realistic colour. As such, you’d expect most images to work either as black&white or as colour; it can also be somewhat annoying when one sees an image presented in more than one way as though the photographer couldn’t decide. It’s even more irksome when you are that photographer. Today I reprocessed an image taken a couple of months ago, and was struck by how it looked in the intermediate colour form before applying the intended toning.
Shapes in the Dark – colour
Shapes in the Dark – black and white
In this case, I contend the two images both stand alone independently well, and they convey different things; further, the the colour gives a means of distinguishing the silhouetted trees from the surrounding foliage that the black&white image does not, making it look moodier.
Narcissi and Dutchman’s Breeches backlit in the evening light.
It’s been a bit warm the past couple of weeks; with temperatures over 23C indoors in the study and the sun beating down pretty fiercely, we’ve reduced Dog’s walks especially at lunchtime. This is where having a bit of woodland nearby proves its worth – the gentle breeze, sounds of leaves rustling and several degrees cooler makes it quite a relief.
There are several notable trees in the local woods – some for the slightly warped trunk shapes, but I like this one for the exuberant yet slightly spooky angles it throws its branches at.