Loch Sgamhain

Oblique Winter Light on Loch Sgamhain (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24-105mm lens at 80mm, ISO 200, 1/640sec at f/8.0)

I took these shots on my way home from a Wester Ross Biosphere meeting at Achnasheen.  The remnants of the hard frost over the past few days can be seen in the first photo with the oblique sunlight showing off the shape and texture of the slope on the far side of the loch.  The loch was a perfect mirror with the two Greylag Geese adding a little life to the image.  I tried taking this shot with a wider angle but despite trying HDR as well I could not avoid bright sunspots with weird colours from reflections off the lens so I had to zoom in to avoid the bight light from the right.

The shot below was taken looking west and using three auto-bracketed shots (+/- 2 stops) to try and retain some of the foreground detail against the extremely bright sunlight.  This one worked pretty well I think but I still needed to tone down the brightness of the whites a bit.

Looking West into the Sun from Loch Sgamhain (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24-105mm lens at 24mm, ISO 200, 1/3200sec at f/8.0, HDR from 3 auto-bracketed shots +/- 2 stops)