On my way home from a funeral today I stopped off in Glencoe for a bit of fresh air and inspiration.  This is a pretty typical view, often photgraphed but it never ceases to inspire.  Today, the colours were fairly muted with the grass pretty yellow still and the clouds a bit grey to begin with.  However, the sun came out a bit and the clouds gained a bit of contrast and the prosects for a decent shot improved significantly.  Due to the muted colours I thought this would translate well into black & white.  I had to use a reasonably heavy ND Grad filter to tone down the sky but it worked quite well.

On the way back to the car I stopped at a small burn where the colours of the mosses and lichens were really vibrant and the contrasting colours of the rocks under the water in the small pool promised an interesting shot.  I took this with a full ND8 filter to slow the shutter speed to soften the water movement and I think it came out nicely.

After a long day of tidying and a fine roast dinner I decided to try a few more shots with my extension tubes using some lovely bright irises and yellow roses.  The brilliant contrast in colour in the iris makes a striking image.  I tried this one at f/4.0 to try and keep the background blurred but forgot that with the extension tubes you get an incredibly shallow depth of field anyway.  hence, I had to shut down the aperture a couple of stops to bring more of the iris flower into focus.

I then focused upon the yellow rose in the left background of the above shot, to see if I could get an image of a rose to compare witht he red and the white roses I took last month.  The two shots below are the result, in colour and black & white.

The last two days have been mainly focused upon tidying my office and trying to throw out a load of old stuff that is really not needed any more.  In the process I found a folder of old transparencies and as a bit of a diversion I tried taking digital shots of them using a converted lens thing I bought many years ago.  The shot of a fine sunset at Balnakiel Beach, taken originally in 1992 while on holiday, was the ebst I could manage.  The adaptor is desined to screw int the filter ring of the camera, 52mm diameter.  I have a 52 to 58mm concerter ring so that made it possible to take this shot using my Canon EOS 500D with its 18-55mm EFS lens.  However, youo have to orientate the slide manually and then focus and the lens twists so it all becomes a bit of a faff and difgficult to get a sharp focus, more practice needed, and very good light.  Anyway, not bad for a quick trial, and amazing what a few tweaks in Lightroom will do as well.

Last night the South Skye Camera Club held an outing to Eilean Donan Castle to try and capture some late evening light and maybe some shots of the castle lit up.  I took a good number of shots but the light was not great and I seemed to be constantly in the wrong place when there was a bit more brightness from the late setting sun but these are a few of the better shots, including some of Dornie village from the Dornie Bridge, which I quite like.

Well after four weeks of no broadband, thanks to EE's inept customer service we are back online.  I have not been out with the camera much over the past four weeks due to being very busy at work mainly but here is a selection of those shots I have managed to get.  It is nice to be able to get back to blogging.

I took this shot from beside the road at Balnacra in Strathcarron on my way to Inverness one morning.  On the far side (south side) of the strath is an old settlement, no longer inhabited but the land is still crofted.  The old ruins stand out against the remnant green of what once must have been decent croft land, now dominated by rush pasture and sheep grazing.

Last week saw some fantastic sunsets but I only managed out once with the camera, but got some nice shots from Drumbuie looking towards Skye & Raasay.