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 2024-10-28

 

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 2024-09-30

 

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

Photo of the Week 2022-04-25

 

' spanning time '

 

For this week's photo, I'm going back a few weeks when I visited Pakenham ON to photograph this historic bridge. While revisiting the images from the day, I found this image from the east side of the bridge and decided to apply a vintage treatment with Silver Efex from the NIK Collection.

 

DJE