Above: Some nice birch stems with vibrant colours and patterns and lichens to add texture. These trees appear to have an infinite range of tones and patterns and seems to glow whenever the sun comes out. Below: Some leafy lichens growing on old tree stems by the roadside. Above: This is an unusual little stand of alder/hazel trees that have obviously been cut in the past, probably for fencing hurdles or perhaps to use as wattle gable ends on the traditional barns of the Lochalsh area. The result is multiple stemmed trees with lots of thin stems, priovidng excellent shelter for the Highland cattle of Duiriinish.
Below: The Allt Duirinish in full flow after a period of consistent wet weather. This little river cuts through the rocks and woodland creating a moist leafy atmosphere with lichen strewn stems and branches, a cool Caledonian rainforest.
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This is a slightly artistic impression of the view from Armadale on Skye looking towards Knoydart on the mainland this lunchtime. The actual view was pretty dull, colour-wise, so I used HDR to bring out the contrast and then merged the images using Photomatix 5.1. The resultant image was still a bit dull so I applied various artistic presets and felt this was quite nice, albeit a bit brighter than reality. I applied the same basic approach to the photo below as well.
Busy day today with a trip to Inverness and then Parents' Evening at the school so not much time for photography. However, I set up a simple still life of some fresias and tried doing some focus stacking with extension tubes on my 28-300 mm lens. This all went according to plan, I think, until I tried importing them into Photoshop Elements 14 to stack them and the software stopped working. I don't know what it is about Adobe softwrae but they keep updating stuff and then plugins and the like stop working, it is very annoying because you basically have t go back and reinstall everything. Hence, this is not a focus stacked image, just a simple macro shot. I will try and do the focus stacking again tomorrow and if it works add the relevant images to this post, hopefully... A day later and here is the best of my attempts at focus stacking. Somehow I seems to have managed to get the extreme foreground out of focus, the near foreground OK then a blurry bit in the middle and then a more focused bit behind that. Obviously I have moved the focus ring a little too far each time, more practice needed.
A much better morning today gave me the opportunity to get out for a short while between meetings, so on the way back from Plockton I popped into Duirinish to take a few shots. I took this photo with a Circular Polarizing Filter (CPL) to try and bring out the blues in the sky, which worked quite well. The distant Cuillins look quite sharp in their snowy clothes and the clouds add something to the image I think. Not a great shot but certainly nice to see some blue sky after the past week or so, and a chance to try out the CPL filter with the new lens.
This is what a desperate Jack Russell looks like when treats are on the go.
A stormy start to February with the arrival of Storm Henry. It has definitely been a bit breezy and is scheduled to peak this evening. This view was taken from the bottom of the Sunken Garden at the Lochalsh Woodland Walks looking east towards Kintail. The picture does not really do the sea justice but as you can see the sky was very heavy and light was pretty well absent for the early afternoon. I had hoped to get a bit of a squall coming through but chose a calmer spell of weather and got a bit damp and cold waiting so settled for this shot. Just goes to show if you are going out to photograph something be wrapped up nice and warm and dry.
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AuthorI am an amateur photographer who is also a Chartered Geographer with his own part-time consultancy business and I work as an estate manager for a national conservation charity in Scotland. I am based in Lochalsh, Wester Ross, Scotland, just next to the Isle of Skye. SalesIf you like my photos and are interested in purchasing prints, whether framed, mounted or otherwise please click here.
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