What a beautiful day it was today here on the west coast. We took the opportunity to take a drive over the hill to Glenelg. I had it in mind to try an old favourite shot of mine, but using my IR converted camera. I could have done with a slightly wider angle lens and a lens hood to prevent the sun flares but otherwise it worked really nicely I think. I usually convert all my IR images into black & white, but occasionally I like them in the 'goldie' format. This camera is a 850nm conversion, otherwise known as a 'Goldie' and the colour version, when corrected for white balance, looks like the following image. The other common IR conversion (720nm) tends to produce a more blue & pink result in colour. The last shot was taken from the other side of the dun, in the shade, under the big tree, and I think it works really well. The 'Goldie' version is a bit dull, with very little yellow for some reason, I am not sure why, but the black & white version, included here, works fine..
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In keeping with my recent interest in infra-red photography, I took advantage of some good weather when visiting the Golspie and north-east Highlands recently with my wife. This is part of the country that I do not know very well at all, so we spent a good amount of time just exploring in the car, with frequent stops for photographs, coffee and the occasional cake. This is a small collection of my favourite IR images from the trip. There will be more colour and/or standard black & white images to follow soon when I get time to process them. The first image, my favourite, is of a wonderful twisted old dead tree by the Strath Brora road. The contrasty light, with the mixed woodland made this old specimen really stand out. I knew immediately that it would make a good compostion, and when I pressed the shutter release, and looked at the screen on the camera, I knew it would turn out well. The next three images are all varying zooms of another tree, in this case an isolated old sycamore. This one was standing proudly in the centre of a field, against the skyline, with no other trees in the vicinity. One really wonders how it got there, and how it is the sole survivor. Not a native species to Scotland, this must have been planted a long time ago given the lack of any others in the area. I tired different compositions and focal lengths to see what worked best. I think I like the first one best, but they all have their appeal. We were staying is a cottage in Golspie and I found the next scene on an evening walk just along the road a little. There is a ford across the Big Burn and adjacent to it is an old complex of lodge buildings for Dunrobin Castle, known as Tower Lodge. The combination of the water cascading over the weir at the ford, the trees, and the old buildings, made for a beautiful compostion. A clear blue sky would have enhanced the contrast with the trees, but that was not to be so late in the evening. The buildings were actually in very poor condition, which is a crying shame considering how attractive they look. The last couple of images are from Forsinard, where the RSPB have a nature reserve in part of the Flow Country. My wife had never been to Bettyhill, so we headed up to Lairg, then onwards via Altnaharra and down Strathnaver to Bettyhill. Forsinard is in the neighbouring valley, Stath Halladale and the Strath of Kildonan, which we took in on our way home. The flows are truly impressive, if a bit desolate, to put it mildly. These peatlands are internationally important in terms of carbon reserves and ecologically, and a bid is being pulled together for the whole area to be designated a World Heritage Area by UNESCO. The Forsinard viewpoint tower is a strangely modern structure in this vast open landscape, but it works well, and certainly made for an excellent focal point for this image. I took several shots from different vantage points but most suffered from hideous sun flares and were not really useable. That is what comes from not having a lens hood for that lens. The train station is still in use and also houses the modest RSPB information centre. I has been one of those magnificent summer days with bright sunshine, blue skies and lots of fluffy white clouds. As such my thoughts turned to infra-red photography and I popped out briefly with my IR-converted Olympus E-P1 mirrorless camera. I tried a few different shots with mixed results but the one above, of the coachhouse here at Lochalsh Woodland Walks, was by far the best. The trouble with bright sunshine is it can sometimes lead to lense flare if the angles are wrong, especially at wider angles, so several of my attempts were less than perfect as a result. That being said, it is always good to practice, and it is the first time I have been able to test the IR method on a truly suitable day. The following are a few of the other examples, some in black & white and some in the 'goldie' format. I honestly can't believe that it has been six months since I last posted on my blog, but it has!! I have genuinely lost my mojo when it comes to photography over the last few months, with a combination of work pressures and really poor weather in the north-west of Scotland (mostly), I just wasn't feeling the vibe. When I did get out I was generally just going through the motions and as a result haven't produced any notable images for quite some time. Anyway, I am feeling more in the mood and have some holidays coming up, so let's hope the energy returns and I can get back into posting more regularly. The above image was taken this weekend at Alltandhu in the Coigach area of Wester Ross. There was a small flock of twite, a kind of brown finch which is actually pretty rare, flying around the campsite and feeding on the flowering docks. This one kindly perched, feeding, quite close to the car and I managed to get some shots through the open window before it flew away. There were also some wonderfully colourful lesser redpolls, a close relative of the twite, but sadly they were too mobile to get a decent shot. I have been trying for many years to get a dgood shot of a twite, without success as they mainly sit too far away, on fence wires and the like, but at last I have one - happy days. While going through my more recent images I worked up the following collection of bird shots which I am pretty pleased with: So today was one of those days when a bit of improvisation paid off, resulting in a lovely coastal walk at Drumbuie. Originally, I had planned to walk to Coille Dalavil on the Sleat peninsula on Skye, with my Border Collie, Broc. However, after a very short distance down the path, I realised I was going to have to negotiate a herd of feeding cattle. The area around the path was a quagmire and my dog is very nervous of cattle, with good cause. The cattle quickly saw the dog and started towards us, so I decided discretion was the better part of valour, and as there was no easy way around them due to the wet boggy ground, I headed back to the car and then off in search of a new location for a walk. I drove round the coastal road to Ord and we spent a little while on the beach while I took a few shots looking towards Suisinish and the Cuillins. The light was not generally great, with lots of cloud covering most of the main Cuillin ridge, but Bla Bheinn was occasionally peeping out of the clouds, showing off its amazing skyline. The above shot is the best of today's collection, with the little patch of sunlight on the Kilmarie peninsula in front of the mountain really adding to the scene. I then decided to head home and opted for a walk around the coast at Drumbuie and Port an Eorna, back on the Balmacara Estate. Again, because of the likelihood of cattle feeding around the main croft access road I decided to do the circular route in an anit-clockwise direction, going down to Port an Eorna first and then round the coast as far as Drumbuie. The shot below was taken from the edge of the croft land at Drumbuie, looking westward towards Skye. The small islands in Port Cam, off Drumbuie, and the stunted trees on the foreground headland really set the scene nicely. I pretty much tried to balance the exposure to avoid losing detail in the sky but retaining as much detail on the sea and foreground as possible. I darkened the sky a little using a grad filter in post-processing, and I also lightened the foreground slightly, as it had become a bit silhouetted. The washed out winter colours of the land and the pale cerluean sky are beautifully offset by the warm glow of the low sun, just out of the scene to the left. The amazing subtle colours in the clouds really made this a compelling shot for me. As expected the cattle were gathered around the main gate at Drumbuie, so rather than try to force my way through them with the dog I just about-turned and headed back the way i had come. While a bit disappinting it meant I did get a longer walk - much to Broc's delight. As I got back to the car the light was really improving, as the sun got lower in the sky, and I got the next two shots looking across the Duirinish crofts. Finally on the way home I stopped the car on the roadside, hoping not to cause anyone too much of an issue, so I could try and capture the following shot, looking beyond Erbusaig towards Skye. The light was very dramatic and this view often appears very foreshortened, adding to the impact. I used my 45-200mm lens, which on thesmall mirrorless camera is equivalent to a 90mm lens of a full frame dslr, so it added a bit more zoom, increasing the foreshortening effect a little. The road leads the viewer's eye into the frame and the v-shape of the valley frames the dramatic background really well. Sometimes it pays to stop the car, although I am often not very good at doing just that. So, while not exactly what I had planned, it turned out to be an excellent afternoon out for a lovely walk with the dog. Best laid plans are sometimes better changed!
Yesterday marked my first outing with the camera in 2022. I took the opportunity of a semi-decent forecast and a break in the snowy weather, to take a flying trip north to the Coigach area. As it happened the light could have been better for most of the trip but I did get a few opportunities for some decent shots. The first shot, appropriately at the gateway to Coigach is from Loch Culdromannan by the main Ullapool to Lochinver road, looking west towards Beinn Mor Coigach and Stac Pollaidh. The subtle muted colurs and the light snow covering made for a nice composition. I then headed along the road to the Achnahaird peninsula and got a few decent shots of this wonderful landscape and amazing coastline. The following is a selection of the best ones. Since it was the first day in ages with a bit of blue sky and some cloud, when I had time to try some photography, I thought I would do a bit more experimenting with infrared (IR). This was done using a 680nm converted Olympus Pen E-P1 camera. The final result in colour is shown above, the original shot from the camera looked like this one below: The conversion of this image involves quite a few steps in Lightroom and Photoshop, including setting the white balance to get the correct tones initially, then switching around the RGB channels and fiddling with a range of other settings, curves, etc. to get the correct balance of colours. The result is interesting and the yellows contrast the blues in the sky nicely. I also tried converting it to black & white using Nik's Silver Efex Pro III, the result is below: The classic white effect, reminiscent of snow, is the result of the IR light being emitted from vegetation, particularly the green stuff. It can provide fantastic contrasty images but does require a fair bit of experimentation, and I need to keep practising - watch my blog for future posts on this subject.
My Annual Exhibition at the Steadings Gallery, Balmacara Square (IV40 8DJ) opens today at 11am. The exhibition, entitled 'All Washed Out', will run from today (27th November) until 2nd December, open daily from 11am to 6pm. I have produced an e-Book of the exhibition collection which can be downloaded, free of charge, here. However, if you wish to make a donation towards the Wester Ross Biosphere please get in touch via my email - here - and I will arrange for that to be made.
I also have a wide selection of canvas prints, mounted and unmounted prints, cards and postcards for sale, as well as the limted edition 2022 Iain Turnbull Photography calendar - an absolute bargain at £7.50. A lot of these prints will be on SALE at up to 50% off the normal retail price, so why not come along and see the exhibtion, grab a Christmas bargain, and have a chat. After weeks of very poor weather and an almost complete lack of any photography, I found a couple of hours yesterday when the light was good and I had time to get out. I went for a spin round the Balmacara Estate and ended up at the Coral Beach at Plockton where I shot this image using a long exposure of 105 seconds. The long exposure produces this smooth sea effect and blurs the clouds due to movement, but also results in stationary objects remaining pin sharp. I used my Zomei HD glass ND1000 (10 stop) filter to reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor, and thus requiring the lonnger exposure, plus a Zomei HD glass ND0.9 (3 stop) graduated filter to darken down the brighter sky and balance the exposure. Compositonally, I opted for more foreground and less background as the bulk of the sky was not very interesting and the beach had this wonderful pinky red coral exposed at low tide. The coral here is maerl which is a relatively rare form of coral found in Scotland's north-west coastal waters. The view is looking from the beach across the Inner Sound towards Skye and Raasay, one of three Marine Protection Areas in the UNESCO Wester Ross Biosphere. While I was out I stopped between Erbusaig and Drumbuie and took a couple of shots from the roadside as the light was interesting, highlighting the colours and textures of the landscape at this time of year. The patch of foreground light and the bright tops to the clouds brought my attention to this scene as I drove past, so I stopped and walked back to capture the shot. While this is nothing special in terms of dramatic composition, essentially just another bit of bog and moorland with a few hills in the background, the varied light makes it an interesting and compelling composition, typical of this part of the nort-west Highlands. I opted for my 70-200mm lens with a bit of zoom to focus on the loch and foreshorten the distance to the mountains of Skye, highligting the light and dark areas. With a wider angled lens the broad expanse of the image diminishes this type of effect illustrating the fact that sometimes it is the details in the landscape that make for interesting images, not just the wide expansive shots.
The following shot was taken from just along the road looking north towards the Applecross hills and the Bealach na Ba, which were also illuminated by the same low sunlight, contrasting the slightly darker foreground which was in shade. The amazing textures of the rocks really stand out in this low angled sunshine and the fine dusting of snow on the tops produces a really fine sharp definition against the sky. I took advantage of a quick trip to Lochcarron this afternoon to take a walk up the south side of Strathcarron to the old dwellings at Arineckaig. This was my first time up as far as this, although I have seen these old buildings many times from the Balnacra road and promised myself I would visit one day. The light was at times excellent today, and at times flat and overcast with rain showers threatening throughout my walk. When the sun did peep through the gaps in the clouds the effect was wonderful, highlighting the early autumn colours in the landscape. The above view was taken on my way back to the car and I just managed to catch the sun on the trees around Arineckaig Lodge, showing off the varied shapes and forms of the different tree species really nicely. The looming clouds provided a lovely dramatic backdrop, contrasting marvellously with the illuminated foreground. I love trees, especially as a photographic subject. Whether it is close-up shots of the bark or leaves, twigs and the like, or wider shots of specimen trees, or just woodland habitat, they never fail to provide variety and lots of opportunities, especially at this time of year. Today was one of those days when the light was behaving well, sometimes, and the following are a few shots of trees from my walk. The above shot was taken looking north-east up Strathcarron from the deserted settlement of Arineckaig. There are the remains of several old dwellings that at some point in time have been abandoned, or possibly cleared - I do not now the local history. There is good land here whihc despite being poisoned by sheep grazing and neglect appears to be fighting the onslaught of rushes, in parts at least. This is yet another location among the many across the Highlands and Islands where people used to live in greater numbers than they do today. Yet there is demand for croft land and affordable housing, and still we continue to see over-grazing by sheep and deer and decent land being neglected when it could provide for more families. One wonders what it will take for our society to see the potential benefits of taking a different view of what our future can look like, where people work in harmony with nature to provide a sustainable future for both. That is certainly not what I was seeing today and the echoes of the community that lived here once upon a time were loud in my ears as I took the following image of another empty house.
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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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