A Quick Trip to Appin

Castle Stalker & Loch Linnie (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-105mm f/4L lens at 24mm, ISO 200, 1/640 sec at f/11, ND Grad Filter, Handheld)

Today we had a quick trip to Appin for lunch to meet my wife's brother and his wife.  The weather was generally very changeable but on the whole not great, although there were some lovely clear patches of sunshine and blue sky between the showers.  This shot was taken from above Castle Stalker looking west towards Mull.  As a result of the bright sunshine to the south-west I tried using my circular ND Grad filter to darken the sky a bit, which appeared to work well, but when I got back home and looked at the photos on the computer there was a real magenta hue in the top.  I have tried to remove this by altering the colour temperature and tint (increasing the blue/green) and that has done a reasonable job.  I'm not hugely impressed by any of the shots I took from this location to be honest but it is a good view.

I tried zooming in a bot closer on the castle and opted for the portrait orientation and concverted the next image to black & white to try and draw out the drama in the sky, with a little success.  This conversion to B&W also meant that the magenta hue was removed and the sky works well I think.

Castle Stalker (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-105mm f/4L lens at 73mm, ISO 200, 1/640 sec at f/11, ND Grad filter, Handheld)

After lunch we popped long to Barcaldine and went for a short walk up Gleann Dubh along the Abhainn Teithill.  There are some nice waterfalls providing an opportunity for some interetsing shots.  Unfortuantely a lot of the route is fenced off so it is difficult to get into good positions to capture the depth and the narrow gorge.  However, lower down I got this shot, looking directly into the sun which resulted in this amzing bokeh effect with the small aperture.  There were also some strange striation lines showing up in the darker areas, not sure if that is a scratched filter or what but I managed to darken these down so they are not too obvious.

Abhainn Teithil, Barcaldine (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-105mm f/4L lens at 55mm, ISO 100, 0.5 sec at f/22, Tripod)