Despite the weather forecast being a bit poor I decided today to venture north over the Bealach na Ba to the Applecross area and check out a location I have fancied for a while.  The above shot was taken at the shore at Coille Ghillidh, just a few miles south of Applecross.  This small settlement is situated about 2km off the beaten track, with a footpath leading to two small settlements by the shore overlooking the Inner Sound.  The above shot, while not very exciting in terms of quality of light, does serve as a useful development piece compositionally, with the old house providing an interesting foreground set off against the backdrop of the Cuillins on Skye.  The angle of the front of the house leads the viewer's eye nicely into the frame.  I am sure I will revisit this location when the forecast is better and the timing can provide better light.

The following few shots were also taken in the same vicinity, looking north towards Raasay and Rona from a lovely coral beach.  The clouds provided enough contrast in a generally grey sky to make me believe this might make an intersting view.  I have made these two images using three bracketed exposures to balance the exposure of the brighter sky and the darker foreground, and merged them in Lightroom, using the HDR merge function, and then copnverting to black & white in Nik's Silver Efex Pro 3, using some selective colourisation to try and capture the bleak palette that we had today.

The final image illustrates the connection the residents of this small settlement would have had with the sea.  There remains an area of the shore which has been cleared of larger stones to form a basic slipway and this old winch would have made retrieving the boats form the sea a whole lot easier than doing it by hand.  The colours of the rusty metal were interesting but tended to overwhelm the lovely textures so I opted for a sepia conversion in Lightroom to try and highlight that aspect, which worked well I think.

As part of my investigation of Infra-Red photography I have come across several lovely portrait images which are characterised by beautiful soft skin tones.  As such I wanted to try out some IR portaiture myself so asked my lovely daughter, Eilish, to pose for this shot.  It was a very quick experiment, with no consideration for pose or lighting, etc., just set up to try it out and see how it worked.  The result is lovely I think, with the expected soft tones and good separation from the background, a blue/grey wall.  Suffice to say, I'll be trying more of this with a bit more thought put into composition, etc. and assuming I can find some willing models.

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..