My Annual Exhibition at the Steadings Gallery, Balmacara Square (IV40 8DJ) opens today at 11am.  The exhibition, entitled 'All Washed Out', will run from today (27th November) until 2nd December, open daily from 11am to 6pm.  I have produced an e-Book of the exhibition collection which can be downloaded, free of charge, here.  However, if you wish to make a donation towards the Wester Ross Biosphere please get in touch via my email - here - and I will arrange for that to be made.

I also have a wide selection of canvas prints, mounted and unmounted prints, cards and postcards for sale, as well as the limted edition 2022 Iain Turnbull Photography calendar - an absolute bargain at £7.50.  A lot of these prints will be on SALE at up to 50% off the normal retail price, so why not come along and see the exhibtion, grab a Christmas bargain, and have a chat.

After weeks of very poor weather and an almost complete lack of any photography, I found a couple of hours yesterday when the light was good and I had time to get out.  I went for a spin round the Balmacara Estate and ended up at the Coral Beach at Plockton where I shot this image using a long exposure of 105 seconds.  The long exposure produces this smooth sea effect and blurs the clouds due to movement, but also results in stationary objects remaining pin sharp.  I used my Zomei HD glass ND1000 (10 stop) filter to reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor, and thus requiring the lonnger exposure, plus a Zomei HD glass ND0.9 (3 stop) graduated filter to darken down the brighter sky and balance the exposure.

Compositonally, I opted for more foreground and less background as the bulk of the sky was not very interesting and the beach had this wonderful pinky red coral exposed at low tide.  The coral here is maerl which is a relatively rare form of coral found in Scotland's north-west coastal waters.  The view is looking from the beach across the Inner Sound towards Skye and Raasay, one of three Marine Protection Areas in the UNESCO Wester Ross Biosphere.

While I was out I stopped between Erbusaig and Drumbuie and took a couple of shots from the roadside as the light was interesting, highlighting the colours and textures of the landscape at this time of year.

The patch of foreground light and the bright tops to the clouds brought my attention to this scene as I drove past, so I stopped and walked back to capture the shot.  While this is nothing special in terms of dramatic composition, essentially just another bit of bog and moorland with a few hills in the background, the varied light makes it an interesting and compelling composition, typical of this part of the nort-west Highlands.  I opted for my 70-200mm lens with a bit of zoom to focus on the loch and foreshorten the distance to the mountains of Skye, highligting the light and dark areas.  With a wider angled lens the broad expanse of the image diminishes this type of effect illustrating the fact that sometimes it is the details in the landscape that make for interesting images, not just the wide expansive shots.

The following shot was taken from just along the road looking north towards the Applecross hills and the Bealach na Ba, which were also illuminated by the same low sunlight, contrasting the slightly darker foreground which was in shade.  The amazing textures of the rocks really stand out in this low angled sunshine and the fine dusting of snow on the tops produces a really fine sharp definition against the sky.