Just like Greta Garbo said: “I want to be alone!”
Lola was tucked in for a snooze after her dinner. Very unhappy I disturbed her with taking a few pictures. But she will be happy once she gets the bag of goodies from Misfits Dogs a tweet of this picture with the comment “I’ll only come out of my nest for a wonky chomp” has earned her.
The Whangie (‘whang’ being slang for ‘thick slice’) is a massive gash in the rock face below Auchineden Hill. There are various scientific explanations given as to how this geological wonder was formed including glacial plucking and an earthquake. However, a much more interesting and colourful explanation is the myth that the Whangie was formed by the Devil flicking his tail in anticipation of pleasure as he flew over Stockie Muir on his way to attend a Witches’ Sabbath.
The combination of this geological wonder and the myth of it’s origin is the inspiration behind my new photographic project: capturing geological features in the Scottish landscape attributed to and associated with the devil or the occult.
Taking this image posed a real challenge, capturing the wide angle as well as the dark shadows of the rock face and the bright highlights of the cloudy sky. I briefly toyed with the idea of using multiple natural density graduates, but the shape of the sky in the composition made that virtually impossible. So I decided on taking the below nine images consisting of three sets of three bracketed images (-3, 0 and +3 stops) taken with my 24mm tilt and shift lens (shifted left, middle, right).
With the sun shining, Lola and I decided to head out of town for a long walk in the country. The plan was to head for Loch Ardinning for our usual wander along the loch and across the muir. However, the traffic on Maryhill Road was very heavy, meaning a long queue at the roadworks on the road to Milngavie. So we changed our minds and headed up through Bearsden towards Drymen for a wander from the Queen’s View to The Whangie.
What a good decision it turned out to be. Not for avoiding the potential delays as there were roadworks in Bearsden as well, but simply for the stunning views towards Loch Lomond and the mountains beyond. It’s been way too long since we have done this walk, and I had more or less forgotten how splendid the views can be.
INSERT INTERACTIVE PANO
This interactive panorama should give you an appreciation of the views we had across Stockie Muir towards Loch Lomond and beyond. It is best seen in full screen, enabling you to explore the vista and intimate aspects through scrolling round and zooming in/out.
The seed feeders in our garden attract a large variety of finches and tits. The chaffinches are, without a doubt, the most numerous, easily outnumbering the green finches, gold finches, blue tits, coal tits, great tits and siskins combined.
While enjoying a warm late morning with a mixture of sunshine and cloud on the deck, I decided to do a little experiment. I set up the camera with my 400mm lens combo and remote trigger release on my tripod, composing a frame just to the left of one of the seed feeders, manually focussing on the plane containing the seed feeder and setting the camera to aperture priority at f8. Every time one or more birds were about to fly into the frame, I triggered a burst of three to four shots.
After quickly deleting the large number of shots with empty frames, I set about selecting the ones that are sharp as well as showing a nice flying pose. What actually amazed me was the high success rate of sharp and nearly sharp images with a first attempt.
Once I had my shortlist of images, I set about cropping these to a tighter composition round the chaffinch, generally 20% to 25% of the frame, boosting the contrast slightly and brightening the shadow areas a little to compensate from shooting into the sun.
I am pretty pleased with the results and will definitely repeat this approach with a few tweaks. The next time I will place the camera much closer to the feeder with a tighter composition and at a slightly different angle using my 70-200mm lens at 200mm. This should bring the focal plane more in line with the common flight path and provide some extra sharpness and wider depth of field. The tighter composition will probably affect the success rate, but should require less cropping and therefore, better quality images.
The male chaffinch is actually a colourful and wonderfully striking little bird, as illustrated by this series of seven images. They are often overseen by photographers as they are so common, but should deserve much more attention.
These three images show a female chaffinch in flight. Not as colourful and striking as the male, but still a cute little bird and a worthy subject.
To illustrate the nearly sharp images, here are three shots that would have been great if they had been sharper.
The fabulous weather has brought out the butterflies en mass this week, resulting in the unusual combination of red peacock butterflies feasting on bright yellow daffodils.
I just love the beautiful colours of the daffodils and the peacock.
The weather has been absolutely fantastic this week, more like having a mid somer’s day in the middle of March, than the heavy snow we had two year’s ago at this time. We have been able to eat lunch outside in the sun all week, admiring the hazy views over the loch and Arran, the flocks of birds frequenting the trees and our seed feeders, and the black throated divers wailing on the loch.
Yesterday we spotted this little weasel scurrying through one of the big hollow trees in the orchard. Thankfully, I had my camera with 400mm lens at hand, so I got these couple of shots while sitting at the table. I got up and followed it round the side of our fence until it disappeared behind our neighbour’s shed, but it was too fast to get another shot off.
This is the second time we have spotted this shy and fast animal in over a year. Our neighbour’s kids call it ‘the wee scurry beastie’ as it used to live in their loft, scurrying across the ceiling. We don’t know where it’s nest is these days, but it can’t be far.
After a hard days work at our cottage, making good progress with creating a second bedroom from the junk store upstairs, it was time for a rest. While admiring the view with a well deserved glass of wine, the dark grey rain clouds over Arran started to turn pink. So I decided to grab my camera and sprint up the little hill at the back of the cottage.
Thankfully, I was just in time to capture a couple of ‘close up’ images of the pink rain and blue and pink clouds over Holy Island with my lens zoomed out at 200mm, followed by a series of six images with my lens zoomed in at 70mm resulting in the ultra wide panorama below, before the sun disappeared below Kintyre and the rain clouds changed back to their boring grey.
Spring is most definitely on it’s way!
It’s been an absolute gorgeous day in Cowal with a lovely sunshine, although there was still a bit of a chilly wind. A great day for pottering about the garden and pretending to be a lumber jack. The best thing was to be able to sit outside with a cup of coffee in the sun.
The views from our cottage are always superb, especially when the sun sets with its warm glow over the forest and a pink glow over the mountains on Arran beyond. Although a great colourful sunset, I prefer the black and white version above.
It promises to be a very cold night with a clear, star studded sky and a touch of ground frost. And who knows, maybe a chance to see the Aurora Borealis after a week of red alerts and cloud covered skies.
We got up and came downstairs in the morning to find an empty dog basket in the lounge and Lola nowhere to be seen. That is, until we opened the curtains, with a hot dog lying stretched out in the spot of sun between the French doors and the curtains.
The nice ‘early spring’ morning with a warmish sun and without the biting cold wind from the previous days looked inviting, so after a cup of tea we went for a morning’s wander down the field to the loch. Lola running ragged through the field, chasing imaginary mice and a couple of real pheasants.
Lola must have got too hot lying in the sun that she thought it was spring and decided it was time for a swim in the loch. The water was pretty freezing and did not look inviting to me at all. But Lola loved it, as she went in for a paddle and a swim several times.
While making a coffee in the kitchen, Dowanhill Bob, our local sparrowhawk, swooped into the tree adjacent to our kitchen window, perching on a branch about one metre from the window. He happily sat there for a while, looking round for prey, not bothering with us behind the kitchen window at all.
For the first time in weeks, I did not have my Canon handy so I grabbed my little Lumix LX5 compact and took a few shots at it’s maximum zoom of a meagre 90mm. These two images are cropped a little, but not much, showing how close Bob actually was.
I then went downstairs to get my Canon and Lola ran after me barking her head off. Surprisingly, on my return to the kitchen, I found Bob still sitting on the branch. I aimed the camera but saw nothing. While I removed the lens cap, Bob had enough and flew away.
The spring like weather made for a wonderful afternoon’s walk along the River Kelvin with (finally) some good opportunities for some photography. Not only did I manage to get some good shots of the dipper, I also got this wonderful shot of Lola in action.
The original black and white image (middle below) has become my most successful photo on 500px to date (by a mile!) gaining 33 votes, 13 favourites and 439 views overnight. Being picked by the editors as the second photo in their ‘choice of fresh content of the day’probably helped a lot.
I really love this black and white shot, especially the detail, but was not completely happy with the composition, with Lola being dead central. I played around with different compositions, even tried square, but did not get anything better.
A friend suggested editing the image, lowering Lola in the frame, closer to the log, so she would be on the bottom third. I think this change would take away from the look and title: ‘flying high’. So I decided to do the opposite, placing Lola higher in the frame, on the top third. In my opinion, resulting in an even better shot than the original.
So here are the steps I took to create the final image above. Using the lasso tool in Photoshop, I selected a band containing the tree and Lola, stopping just above the log, then moving the band upwards such that Lola is on the top third. Using the clone stamp tool, I carefully restored the edge and adjacent area as closely as possible to the original look. Using Silver Efex Pro, I then applied the ‘High Structure (Smooth)’ preset and burned the edges softly, still keeping the editing to a minimum.
I would love to hear what you think of the different versions, especially which one is your pick of the crop and why.
It still amazes me how many people always congregate at the weir in the River Kelvin to admire the heron fishing on the far side, and how few people actually notice this lovely loud and active little bird when walking along the river.
The dippers loud call ‘zit, zit, zit’, similar to that of the wren, is a dead give away. On hearing bird’s call, it is always easily spotted due to its white chest and continuously bobbing movements.
This afternoon, I spotted this dipper on the other bank with the wreck of a car as a backdrop, making for a contrasting image. After the bird moved along the bank a little, I got the opportunity to take some shots ‘unspoiled’ by men, getting as close as possible by stepping on some stones in the water. When I turned to step back onto the bank of the river, I realised that I was the attraction of passers by. My jaw dropped when they asked me what on earth I was taking a picture of.
It’s a very wise dipper, staying on the safe and dark side of the river, as far away as possible from the walkway, busy with people and dogs. The little dipper is undeterred by the action on the other side of the river, and is continuously bobbing on the rocks and dipping in and out of the water. Occasionally, it will swim on or even below water in search of food.
Unfortunately, the river is too wide at this point to get close enough, even with 400mm, so the shots below are heavily cropped, in addition to being taken at high ISO and slow shutter speeds.