Views of Eilean Donan Castle this Morning

It was a relatively early start this morning on my way to Aberdeen to collect my daughter Caitlin from Uni and it was a beautiful sunny morning.  As I approached Eilean Donan I did a very touristy thing and inidctaed right at the last minute to pop into the car park for a few shots of the castle and its reflections in the calm sea.  The above shot was taken from the start of the footbridge to the castle, which is a relatively unusual angle for me.  I liked the way the castle was reflected in the pool between the mainland and the island.  The castle was wonderfully illuminated by the early sun and the sky had just enough cloud against the bright blue to make it interesting.

I really liked the colours in this shot but as always wanted to see what it looked like in black & white.  The following shot was converted using the Nik Collection's Silver Efex Pro software and I applied an orange filter to this one to darken down the sky (I was a bit stuck between a red or yellow filter so unusually went for a happy medium which worked well).  As usual this made the sky much more dramatic and the castle very bright against it.  I think on balance I prefer the B&W version but the colour is nice too.

Eilean Donan Castle (Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3; Lumix G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens at 15mm, ISO 160, 1/100 sec at f/14, Orange Filter, Handheld)

The following two shots are taken from a similar vantage point from a previous time.  Again I like the colour but the black & white is certainly more dramatc, I think.  Both had very similar treatment in terms of post processing.  I tried to do as little a spossible to the colur ones but the shaded areas did need lightened up a little as I had under-exposed the images a little to try and keep some of the detail in the sky and I did not want to use auto-bracketing and HDR merging.  The B&W one had a red filter applied this time.

Reflection on Eilean Donan Castle (Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3; Lumix G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens at 14mm, ISO 160, 1/100 sec at f/14, Handheld)

Reflection on Eilean Donan Castle (Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3; Lumix G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens at 14mm, ISO 160, 1/100 sec at f/14, Red Filter,Handheld)