Last night there was a fantastic sunset at Shieldaig in Wester Ross.  The great colours were to a large extent due to the presence of a lot of smoke in the sky as a result of various hill fires in the area, in this case at Diabaig.  I used my Zomei ND8 soft grad filter to allow me to capture more of the detail in the foreground.

The last time I took a sunset shot at Shieldaig was back in 1987 on a road trip with my best mate and I recall getting horrendously bitten by midges then.  Some things don't change as it was pretty fierce last night.

I also took the following shot using the tripod and a longer exposure to smooth out the ripples on the water, just to see how to worked.  In truth it made little difference as the water was pretty smooth anyway, but worth a try.

After four nights of mounting and framing prints, organising labels, posters, signs, etc. I am now ready for my upcoming photography exhibition at the Steadings Gallery, Balmacara Square which starts this Saturday.  The exhibition features many of my shots during the past year plus a few odler ones that I have revisited recently.  Opening hours are 11am to 7pm daily from 26th May to 2nd June so why not take some time out from the forecast warm sunny weather and cool off in the Steadings Gallery and take a look.

The exhibition will consist of 35-37 framed prints plus an assortment of mounted prints and gift cards for sale.  There will also be a slideshow of all my favourite photos for visitors to peruse.  I will also be happy to take orders for for any of my photos.

I spent last week on a trip to Norway with a group of crofting students from Plockton High School visiting the Fosen Folk School in Rissa.  We had three days at Fosen and an evening in Trondheim with excellent weather throughout.  While I was not there specifically for photography I did take the opportunity of taking a fair few shots of the local architecture, the launching of the new boats built this year at Fosen, and rather obliging male Capercaillie in full display mode.  All of these shots were taken on my Panasonic Lumix G3 camera with a vairety of lenses and settings.  The highlights, photographically at least, were the Capercaillie and the wonderfully colourful warehouses at Trondheim, both excellent subjects that lend themselves to good shots.

I took this shot of flowering blaeberry at the Open Air Church in Plockton this afternoon.  It was a very small patch of blaebrries which has established on one of the old terraces where folk used to sit during communion services.  These flowers are tiny, probably only about 1-2mm across so despite not having a proper cmaera with me I have to say I am impressed at how well this came out on the phone.

However, the following shot was taken on my full frame digital SLR, I guess that is the other end of the camera spectrum (albeit a slightly old model).  The light was good and I was a bit early for the fortnightly camera club meeting so decided to stop at Eilean Iarmain to see if there was anything worth shooting.  The lighthouse was well lit by a patch of sunlight and the clouds behind looked fairly dramatic.  I thought the shot might look good but in colour it was a bit flat and lacking in contrast so I tried it in black & white and it worked much better.  The clouds were darkened a bit using an graduated ND4 filter which also helped.