A Long Overdue Walk with the Camera

Fluffy Clouds Over Drumbuie (Canon EOS 250D, Sigma EX 10-20mm f/3.5 DG HSM lens at 10mm, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 100, handheld)

Life has been very busy lately and that, combined with lots of rugby to watch at weekends during the Six Nations Championship, and some poor weather meant that it had been almost one month since I last went out for a walk with my camera.  Today, after doing some work in the garden, I took advantage of the lovely afternoon weather to head over to Duirinish & Drumbuie for a walk round the coastal path.  I almost opted to take my film camera with black & white film, so perhaps that mood was upon me as most of my final processed images from the walk ended up being in monochrome.  When we have lovely blue sky with crisp white clouds I love the contrast provided by applying a red or yellow filter, which darkens the sky and makes the clouds pop.  Today, I took my relatively portable cropped sensor Canon 250D with a Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 lens (equivalent to 16-32mm on a full frame camera), so ultra-wide angle landscape shots only and lots of scope to capture expansive skies.

The first image (above) was taken from close to the shore at Port Ban, looking across the croft land towards the Bealach an Ba in the background.  I was drawn to this shot because of the lovely fluffy clouds suspended amid the vibrant blue sky, which is why  I composed it with the sky filling the majority of the frame.  I cropped the bottom off the image as the wide-angle lens had captured a lot of not very much in the foreground, which tended to detract from the composition.  The image was initially post-processed in Lightroom Classic and then exported to Silver Efex Pro 2 for conversion to monochrome where I also applied a selenium tint (which was a favourite practice of Ansel Adams) and a light vignette as well as the rough border.

The remaining shots were taken aroud the coast looking either north towards the Bealach na Ba or south-west towards Skye.  They are a mix of monochrome and selectively coloured black  & white conversions which create a de-saturated and interesting alternative.  These conversions were all done in Silver Efex Pro 2 which I really like as a plug-in to Lightroom and Photoshop.

Looking across the bay towards the Bealach na Ba (Canon EOS 250D, Sigm EX 10-20mm f/3.5 DG HSM lens at 10mm, 1/80 sec at f/11, ISO 100, handheld)

Lichen Encrusted Rocks by the Shore (Canon EOS 250D, Sigma EX 10-20mm f/3.5 DG HSM lens at 10mm, 1/80 sec at f/11, ISO 100, handheld)

Looking towards Skye from the Drumbuie Coast (Canon EOS 250D, Sigma EX 10-20mm f/3.5 DG HSM lens at 10mm, 1/80 sec at f/16, ISO 100, handheld)