Glorious Globeflower at Drumbuie

Globeflower at Drumbuie (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens at 24mm, 1/80 sec at f/11, ISO 100, handheld)

I took this photgraph of the little stand of globeflower plants at Drumbuie this afternoon when I was out checking one of the estate footpaths.  It was a beautiful sunny afternoon with a light breeze to keep the midges away.  The views to Skye and the Applecross hills were fantastic, especially as I have not been out and about much in recent weeks.  It was challenging to balance the exposure with the birght sky to the west as I did not have my full kit with me, so no ND grad filters.  I'll be honest, I did apply a bit of a grad filter in Lightroom, just to recapture some of the detail in the sky.

Drumbuie from the Shore Path (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens at 24mm, 1/200 sec at f/8, ISO 100, handheld)

This shot was taken from the Port an Eorna to Drumbuie shore path, looking towards Drumbuie.  As a composition it is not a particularly great shot but I liked the view and the range of textures and shapes in the landscape, and the bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds set it off nicely.

The following shot was taken from the same path, near Port an Eorna.  I was taken by the bluebells, and tried to capture a view of them in the foreground with something of the hills of Skye in the background.  Again the light was challenging but I think I managed to get it just about right.

Bluebells near Port an Eorna (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens at 67mm, 1/250 sec at f/8, ISO 100, handheld)

The last shot was taken near Duirinish Station. This old gnarled tree has often taken my fancy for a photograph but I almost always walk this path in a clockwise direction.  Today I was going the other way, and so the view of this tree was not the usual one.  It just goes to show that you should take time to move around your subject and consider different angles.  For this one I initially envisaged in in full colour (image 1 below), but then felt that it might look really nice in black & white, emphasising the textures in the bark (image 2 below).  That didn't quite work as well as I had hoped, with the bright background kind of making the tree less obvious than I expected.  So, I tried something I did for a few photos during my study of the Celtic Rainforest in Wester Ross for my HNC course recently (more on that coming up on my blog soon).  That was using Nik Collection's Silver Efex Pro II to convert the image to monochrome but selectively colouring some areas of the background, leaving the main subject in monochrome.  I think this really makes the tree pop out and focuses the viewer's eye on the textures and tones of the tree.  Not necessarily to everyone's taste but something a little different.

Gnarly Old Tree (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens at 70mm, 1/500 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100, handheld)

Gnarly Old Tree B&W (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens at 70mm, 1/500 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100, handheld)

Gnarly Old Tree Selectively Colourised (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens at 70mm, 1/500 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100, handheld)