Photo of the Week 2025-02-03

 

On the morning we left Callander and headed for our last night in Edinburgh, I took the opportunity to visit a local woodland trail ... to Bracklinn Falls

 

' Keltie Water Falling - H '

Bracklinn Falls are a series of waterfalls north-east of Callander, Scotland on the course of the Keltie Water.

 

I've followed several Scottish/UK photographers on social media for a while and their work has held great appeal for me. 

 

The woodlands they frequent are quite different from what I'm used to at home in Ontario. Many of the trees have twisting and irregular branches presenting quite a different character.  And then they have such great words for rivers, stream, brooks. Abhainn, burn, bàgh, pow, skye are just a few. Those in Gaelic I have no hope of pronouncing correctly and it all simply adds to the appeal.

 

It was absolutely wonderful to explore this short trail and capture just some of the beauty there If this were near home, I would visit frequently ...note to self: get out more and explore places closer to home.

 

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2025-01-27

 

Nearing the end of our time in Scotland, we were looking forward to the drive through Glencoe ...

 

' Lagangarbh Cottage '

As timing would have it, our trip was made in glaringly bright mid-day sunshine. Not great for photography and not what I would choose if I were to plan a photography specific visit to the stunning area.

Add to the scenario, roads very busy with tourists (off season now begins in October and perhaps as late as November) and any of the parking areas were jammed full leaving no opportunity to stop at the locations I had planned. Three Sisters ... scratch. Glencoe Waterfall ... scratch. Meeting of Three Waters ... scratch.

Well I'll be dammed if I'm not gonna get a shot of Lagangarbh Cottage! While the traditional spot to stop was chock full, a bit further south I saw a small farm entrance with space for one more, turned sharply and jammed on the brakes to skid to a stop. With a "what the ..." from my passenger I said "I'm at least gonna get one photo while in Glencoe !

 

And here you have it! Lagangarbh Cottage, on the banks of the River Etive with the mountains of Glencoe as a backdrop.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2025-01-20

 

' Jacobite Steam Train @ Glenfinnan Viaduct '

Having been thwarted from visiting Urqhart Castle and Loch Ness by lack pre-booking and then finding it at sold out at capacity upon arrival the previous day, I was worried that plans to see another Scottish icon would not pan out ...

I'd scoured Google maps for alternate parking possibilities should the Glenfinnan visitors centre be full and the options were not promising. Not having feet on the ground previously at this location made it a bit of a wild card scenario but we headed out with a "get what we get, see what we see" attitude.

Lady Luck would shine on us, literally, with weather and available parking (lots of it) when we arrived just before 9am. The train was scheduled to cross the viaduct at 10:45 so we had some time but still wanted to be in position to capture the event well in advance. Fortunately we were some of the early visitors to arrive and found our way along a well used route, ultimately finding our perch with over an hour to go.

We passed the time waiting by watching others arrive, the workers maintaining the viaduct structure, and chatting with a lovely couple from SW Ontario who were also on vacation. As the scheduled arrival time approached, I made sure the camera was ready, batteries charged, settings were as desired and trained my eyes and ears to the scene ...

... at a couple of minutes passed 10:45 the train came within earshot and then within view at the far end of the viaduct. Conveniently the train stopped on the viaduct, fired up the boiler pressure and photogenically let out a big belch of white steam as it commenced the crossing for all present to snap and video away.

As with most of the locations we visited during this trip, I was always on the look for something other than the common shot. Unfortunately for photography, there were quite a few maintenance personnel in orange overalls working to maintain the viaduct and scaffolding was in place at various points. Fortunately for this piece of history, Scotland cares enough to take care of it's treasures.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2025-01-13

 

' Eilean Donan Castle '

Destroyed by the English in the early 1700's, rebuilt over 20 years in the early 1900's, it was restored to it's former glory by 1932 ... such a shame that we destroy so much of history through conflict and ignorance.

We arrived at this iconic and extensively photographed castle mid-morning on another another bright, sunny and clear Highland day. With the waters of the lochs so calm, I wish the timing had been at high tide and reflections would be better but ...

While trying to see as much as we could throughout this trip, we opted not to enter the castle or tour around other than from the shore and parking area so I could get some photos ... oh, we also used the facilities ;-)

As I work through my images from this trip, I find myself thinking of what I would do next time, where I would allow additional time, when I would plan to visit each location for more optimum lighting conditions for photography. At the same time I know that we had such unbelievably good weather while we were there and count myself fortunate.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2025-01-06

WELCOME TO A NEW YEAR !

 

I'm glad to be here and have anyone following, continue to do so. While I'm in 2025, my photo posting hasn't made it out of September 2024 when I was in Scotland. I'm still working through the images that I made during that 12 day self drive tour. I still have images from the last few days to work on and share. The complete set can be see via this link to my flickr account Scotland 2024. I'm adding to the album as I finish processing more from the trip.

 

This week I bring you to the Isle of Sky ... wait ... we were they with last week's post. Well ... we're still there with this week's post. This time it's Neist Point and the iconic lighthouse. As with many locations I photograph, I make a number of different compositions, some horizontal orientation, others vertical as the subject may warrant. With it getting later in the day and my companion not wanting to be on the remote, narrow roads in the dark, I had to select a position to get some images. Fortunately I had scouted the location via Google Maps and with some delicate tramping over soggy ground found a suitable spot ... or maybe I should have just looked for the gaggle of photogs with tripods and long lenses ;-)

 

' Evening Light at Neist Point - H '

' Neist Point from the Clifftop Viewpoint - H '

' Evening Light at Neist Point -V '

' Neist Point from the Clifftop Viewpoint - V '

There is so much more to explore photographically with this location. Trails lead from the clifftop down to the lighthouse and the rock peak on the left is accessible for what I am certain is an exhilarating vantage point. An then there's night photography with starry skies and auroras ... the options go one.   

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-12-30

 

There were an overwhelming number of things to see for the amount of time we had on Skye during our September trip. Both The Quiraing and Old Man of Storr were at the top of the list, each hike would require a few hours but given logistics and the duration of our visit we had to choose just one ...

... and now you see which won out.

' The Old Man of Storr '

It was a two hour hike up, counting stops to rest, take in the views and of course make use of the camera. This was the ultimate goal, the scene from the lookout, back south to The Old Man and points beyond. It was clear, sunny, very very windy as we reached higher ... and a thrill I'll never forget.

 

The Storr is a prime example of the Trotternish landslip, the longest such feature in Great Britain. The area in front of the cliffs of the Storr is known as the Sanctuary. This has a number of oddly shaped rock pinnacles, remnants of ancient landslips. The most well known of these is 'The Old Man of Storr', a 55-metre-high pinnacle of basalt rock which is all that remains of a 2,800-million-year-old volcanic plug.

Every direction you could look on this hike offered sunning views and scenery. With more time I would have liked to continue the trail further north and perhaps around to the other side of the Old Man, but that may have been a little much for this old man ;-)

 

It will be the Quiraing next time we visit Skye, -with a tip of the cap to to The Old Man on the drive by ...

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-12-23

 

After checking into our accommodations and grabbing a cafe lunch in Portree, we headed off to the Fairy Pools. What an adventure that turned out to be as the access road was rife with potholes and washed out badly in places. I managed to navigate one of the washouts in our low slung BMW sport sedan but gave up in the face of the second when I saw a legit 4x4 having difficulty.

Deflated at having plans scuttled to see our first iconic Skye location, we headed back towards Portree. On the way, Sligachan provided an opportunity for some photography of an old stone bridge, the river and the Glen area. Others must have been doing the same as parking was limited but I managed to squeeze in along the road.

The Old Sligachan Bridge was easily accessible and trails along the river provided some lovely vantage points to set up for some shots.

' Sligachan Old Bridge '

I first found a spot to photograph the old bridge using local vegetation in the foreground and mountain peaks in the background.

' Glamaig and the Sligachan New Bridge '

Battling the midges (my first ever exposure to the little bastards) while trying to patiently frame a shot proved interesting. With some images of the old bridge done, I turned around to see this view of the new bridge (the one that now carries the A87 over the river) with Glamaig in the background with it's summit shrouded in a cloud.

We spent some more time exploring the riverside trails for a bit while I found other interesting scenic compositions before the having enough of the midge bites to think the car would be welcome respite from the little carnivores.

 

Working my way chronologically through my images of Scotland, I was pleasantly surprised when I got to these. At the time of shooting, my disappointment at missing out on the Fairy Pools was overriding my ability to enjoy this location (or maybe it was the midges) fully. I must admit that I was not "feeling it" as much as I would have liked but I'm certainly glad we stopped and that I pushed through to make some images, I really like some of them.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-12-16

 

- The Shores of Loch Assynt -

 

In the Highlands, on the shores of lovely Loch Assynt sit the remains of a 15th Century Castle and a more modest 17th Century Laird's House built for a Lady who "did not care for the austerity" of the castle. Both proved a bit of a challenge to find interesting compositions during our brief stop as we turned onto A837 on the NC500.

' Ardveck Castle Remains Across the Loch '

' What Remains of Ardveck Castle '

' Calda House Remains  Across the Loch '

' What Remains of Calda House '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

' Along the Shore to Calda '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

' Ardveck from the Beach '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

' Back Along the Path to Calda '

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-12-09

 

 

' Moine House III '

A very early start to our day had us in Scrabster to fuel up before hitting the NC 500 for 4+ hours of driving through Caithness and Sutherland. Our first stop to stretch legs and enjoy the scenery was at Moine House in Lairg.

' Moine House '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

' Moine House II '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The remains of Moine House, made a nice foreground element for Ben Hope and the distant peaks, though a bright mid morning sky proved  challenging to prevent from blowing out.

The stop had not been planned so we made it brief and headed off to Durness next.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-12-02

 

While researching locations to visit during our full day on Orkney, I discovered this seaside trail featuring a sea stack. This became our primary objective for our last stop of the day and it did not disappoint. I could have wished for bigger waves or better light but I think this turned out just fine.

 

' Yesnaby Castle Sea Stack '

The Yesnaby Coastal Walk was a wonderful conclusion to our full day on Orkney.

Here are a couple other views of the sea stack ...

' defiant '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

' independent '

 

' last legs '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

' Yesnaby - The Story in the Rocks '

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-11-25

 

' A Birsay Bay Tearoom View '

On our second day on Orkney, after arriving in Birsay and making a number of images from a seaside parking area, I parked the car at the tearoom and stowed the camera gear for lunch. As luck would have it a grand scene developed outside our table-side window ... and me with only my cell phone :-/
 

I posted this shot at the time, direct from the phone complete with reflections in the window. Here, I've cleaned up the reflected lights, added a touch of processing magic and cropped more to my liking.

 

A few minutes later, it looked like this :-O

 

It was a great day, a great lunch and a great view !

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-11-18

 

 

' a stone still standing '

The Stones of Stenness today consist of four upright stones up to 6m in height

 in a circle that originally held 12 stone

 

' The Stones of Stenness '

 

The stones were encircled by a large ditch and bank, the form of which has been lost over time by ploughing. Some of their story is told on the interpretive panels at the site.

 

 

 

 DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-11-04

 

As we docked, then left St. Margaret's Hope for our Orkney accommodations in Stenness, rain came and then quickly passed. By the time we parked our car to unload, the heavy skies were breaking up ...

 

' Across to Graemsay and  further to Hoy '

 ... this was the view that greeted us from the entrance to our home for two nights on Orkney. The sun was beaming rays through the cloud down onto the northern tip of Hoy.

 

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-10-28

 

The Old Packhorse Bridge

On the third day (second day of driving) in Scotland we made our way through the eastern highlands to Inverness. The day's route was planned to include a stop in Carrbridge with plenty of time for photography. Why, because the Old Packhorse Bridge was there.

 

This bridge instantly became a "must see" when I first learned of it while researching locations for our trip. It was one of the first places added to a map of locations to visit for photography. Labeled "the oldest stone bridge in the highlands", whether true or not, it certainly was something to see and a little challenging to find just the right composition.

I’ve visited historical sites before and been surprised to find them surrounded by elements of modern living. Such was the case here, but with some time to explore compositional options I was able to come up with something a bit different than the typical tourist snapshot.

For this subject, one obvious shot was from a viewing platform located st the bottom of a staircase that brought you down closer to river level. Another would have been from the modern road bridge spanning the river slightly downstream. I worked both of these using different focal lengths and even ND filters to get some water smoothing long exposures. Ultimately, the image I like best was from the viewing platform "ish". I say "ish" because I put down the camera bag and stepped up, over and onto the rock of the river bank to get further left than the platform would allow so that I could include the wonderful leaves of a maple sporting fall colour.

 

 

' Fall Colour at The Old Packhorse Bridge '

 

It was hard to get the composition I wanted with some of those "elements of modern living" encroaching on the upper right but I worked it the best I could and took care of the rest in post ;-)

I made a number of shots to document the bridge in context with it's surroundings and offer them here to provide a bit of background story of getting an acceptable image in such conditions.

' commemorative plaque '

 

 

' branches in the way '

' someone move that other bridge '

' what a spot to put a petrol station '

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

' no clear view '

 

 

' at least this shows the upstream rapids '

 

In my ranking, this final one might be a distant second to the featured image.

'  The Old Packhorse Bridge '

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-10-21

 

I was still going through a bit of a backlog of images from Scotland, selecting, editing, processing when the Aurora Borealis event of Oct 10 struck. That provided a totally new experience of shooting, selecting, editing and processing which I blogged about those last week. Now, as I turn back to Scotland, the autumn colours here in Southern Ontario are firing off and of course I'm drawn capture them ...

... although I'm always eager to get to my latest captures, I also want to make the time to continue learning processing methods and techniques. Like my cameras, there is still much capability that I don't know about and use. Today's learning, included reworking an image after viewing an online tutorial showing how to use some of the latest Lightroom masking techniques to transform RAW files.

' Rocky Perch IV.v2 - reworked '

' Rocky Perch IV - initial version '

In the reworked version I used the sky masking feature to increase structure, detail and tame the highlights. I also used a radial gradient to enhance the natural sidelight from the sun, subject masking to bring up shadow detail slightly in the cliff. Finally, I used both radial and linear gradients to darken the foreground and bring more attention to the sunlit castle ruins.
 

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-10-07

Recently, day two in Scotland had us picking up a rental car and navigating our way out of Edinburgh (a story in itself) to the Battery Road Bridges Viewpoint in North Queensferry. All three of the bridges, The Forth (rail) Bridge. The Forth Road Bridge and the Queensferry Crossing are something to see. As a retired Civil Engineer, my interest in what we build remains keen and I was particularly eager to make this stop at the base of the Forth Bridge because of it's historical and engineering significance some of which which can be read via this link.

 

Worth singling out is that the Forth Bridge, once the longest single cantilever span bridge in the world, is a Scottish icon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and today, second longest to the Quebec Bridge which I intended to visit again with sufficient time to photograph (spoiler alert: potential future blog post).

 

' Forth Bridge '

Following my intention, as laid out in a previous post, to look for something a little different, something creative and unique to my vision in "Photography When I Travel", I created the image above. Getting close to the north support base, I was able to use an ultra-wide focal length to capture this powerful composition. Of all the images I made during the brief stop we had on Battery Road, this is my favourite.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2024-09-30

 

Back from Scotland for a week and I'm still posting images from the first day we were there, almost three weeks ago. At this rate it may take me a while to get through all that I shot during the trip :-D

After making a stop at the Scott Monument (last week's post), the next stop while in Edinburgh was Dean Village. Research on potential locations to visit and photograph led me to add this to our Day-1 itinerary as it was just a short walk from our hotel. There was much to photograph (see my Scotland 2024 Album on flickr for some additional images), and the old stone bridge carrying Bells Brae across the Water of Leith really caught my eye. So much so I had trouble selecting just one image, so here's a collage.

 

DJE