Category Archives: Landscape
Sunrise Shore
I started the week with a sunset, and am ending it with a sunrise – there’s something wrong about the order of that, but that’s the way I roll.
This shot was another from Cornwall, and I hope I have the time to process a few more from this location over the weekend. It was taken at Portscatho harbour which was a 20 minute or so walk from the campsite. It wasn’t the best sunrise but it provided some nice light towards the end of it, and then we carried on walking up the coastline to get a few more shots to start the morning off.
I hope everyone has a great weekend…it’s the first one I’m going to have that doesn’t require a stupid’o'clock start so I intend to take it nice and easy. See you on Monday.
Molunan
I’m back from Cornwall and pretty tired, with a lot of catching up to do.
This is the first and only image I’ve processed from my trip so far after getting back home last night. It’s taken from Great Molunan beach at St Anthony Head on the southern coast near St Mawes.
The wonderful clouds we had disappeared as the sun was setting, which was a shame, but once it had almost died out I grabbed my 10 stop filter for this shot. I’m still trying to get used to the 10 stop, knowing when and how to use it. In low light I seem to always get a vignette and in bright light I never get the movement I want. I guess it may just take a little more time and practice before I can make full use of it.
Burn
For those into topography, and with knowledge of where I have traveled to this year, you will possibly guess that this particular spot is in lovely Scotland.
This particular burn looks deceptively shallow from this shot – but it isn’t. Sure, it’s not too deep, but I did wander in there to try and get a few shots looking upstream and the water pretty much came up to my knees in places, and was full of both very sharp, pointy stones and a slime which made it very slippery indeed. I had to use my tripod/camera to ensure I didn’t end up flat on my back – and every step I took left me praying that I didn’t fall over and take the camera in there with me.
As this goes live I may actually be stood in another stream…or up a hill…or in an abandoned factory of some sort. Who knows, as I’m in Cornwall.
Well…I’m probably actually in the pub waiting for the rain to pass to be honest.
Modern Times
This past weekend was ‘Open House London‘ which is a wonderful weekend held every year in this magnificent city whereby businesses, charities and other entities open their doors for the public to come in and take a quick look at what they have behind usually closed doors.
I find it fascinating how many people share the interest of seeing things in London that they normally don’t get the chance to, evidence by the overwhelming popularity of the event which sees those places where you need to book a ticket completely full minutes after the booking site opens, and the queues to enter some of the more popular spots where you don’t need a pre-booking. I can’t help but think how lucky I am to be one of the relatively small groups of people who go up to rooftops without permission, as the queues would be quite annoying otherwise.
I visited 12 locations over the 2 days, 8 on the Saturday and 4 on the Sunday, and had a lovely time throughout.
The above image was taken on the 18th floor of Broadgate Tower and features a few common buildings from my shots up high – I guess there are limited ‘stand out’ buildings in London for me to focus on. The Gherkin sits at the left of the frame, the Heron Tower in the middle and of course the Shard at the right hand side.
I note yorkshire stacked and mattomatto visited this location the day before I did also, so apologies to them for obviously copying their shots during my visit a day later 
)
St Paul’s View
This is one of the views on offer from the Golden Gallery, a viewing platform at the top of the dome on St Paul’s Cathedral. The two towers you see are part of the cathedral itself with Ludgate Hill running away from it and into Fleet Street in the distance.
The Thames runs down the left hand side, with the Millennium Wheel and BT Tower two of the visible iconic buildings in the frame.
I’ve made a couple of trips up here over the past month or two and look forward to returning again as winter sets in. It’s pretty busy up on the small Golden Gallery, so I’m hoping the coldness of winter will keep people away and allow me to take some shots as day turns to night, not possible just now with the early closing hours. I’m also thinking this may be a nice place to try and get a timelapse video done.
Cape Wrath
At the most north-westerly point of mainland Britain stands Cape Wrath, one of only two ‘Capes’ in Great Britain. There is no road access to this Cape, so you either need to travel by foot or do what we did in this instance and take a special tour which meant getting a boat across the Kyle of Durness, followed by a minibus for the 11 mile journey to the lighthouse.
Once there we spent an hour or so wandering around the cliff top taking various photos before making the long trek back. All in all the journey took around 3 hours to complete, but I feel it was time well spent as it was quickly followed by visiting the most north-eastern point.
This location had the worst weather during our trip, with a splash of very light rain in the morning followed by a quick clearing and blue sky – so not bad at all.
As a keen geocacher I felt foolish for not checking out what caches were in this location before visiting, as I could easily have got the answers I needed to tick this one off, as it’s highly doubtful I’ll be making a return trip in the near future.
Castle Sinclair Girnigoe
We hit a lot of castle ruins during my brief dash around Scotland, and Castle Sinclair Girnigoe was one of the last ones we visited towards the end of the trip.
It’s in a pretty bad state, with several sections blocked off from the public – according to their website this is the only castle in Scotland to be listed by the World Monuments Fund.
Towards the back of the castle is a bit of scaffold that you can see poking his head up just beside the flag in the image above, restoration or preservation trying to take place.
There wasn’t much to see, but the scaffold was of interest to me (big surprise). We hopped around a few barriers to make our way closer and was faced with a large iron gate that blocked our way. Castles are weird – it’s as if they’re built to try and keep people out.
The top of the iron gate was bent slightly…and that was the only way I was going to get in, so up I climbed, over I went and a few minutes later I found myself at the foot of the scaffold.
I took a quick look for alarms or motion sensors, but I guess the heavy iron gate was supposed to be enough of a deterrent as none could be seen…so off I went.
One flight up and I heard voices…drats. A couple of other site-seers were heading down the country lane towards the castle…any further up and I would be in clear view of them – if they hadn’t already seen me.
I scooted back down, over the gate and up to the main pedestrianised point – then we left. I am consoled in the fact that there probably wasn’t going to be much to see up there anyway…
Stacks of Duncansby
John O’Groats gets all of the glory, but it’s actually Duncansby Head which is marked as the most North-Eastern part of mainland Britain that’s accessible by road.
During my trip around Scotland we drove from the most North-Western point (Cape Wrath) to here along the Northern coast, taking in some lovely scenery along the way.
Not content with merely sanding on the edge of a cliff looking down we decided to make our way down the rocks by a well worn, and therefore obviously safe, piece of hill. Sure it was a landslide waiting to happen but we were like mountain goats and didn’t fall over at all. Much.
Once on the rocks below we worked our way pretty much from where this image was taken towards the two stacks (they may be called Cletts) in the distance, but did not go all the way over to them. You can’t really see it in this image but at one point the mountain forms an arch that you can walk through and it was to there that we ventured, and to which I did a little scoot up the rocks and found a cave full of pigeons.
To my immediate left here, and just offshore, were a group of seals – possible around 15 of them all spread out. They were comedy seals as the moment I set my tripod up and put the correct glass on they all ducked under the water as one. I got a few shots as they popped their heads up one by one, but none that were very good or special.
Gherkin – Sunset
Last week I featured an image called Gherkin – Sunrise which was taken as the sun was rising over London; I was around 30 floors up at the time, but quite far away.
Today’s image was taken as the sun was setting over London on Friday night, this time I was much closer and 32 floors high. However, unlike that cold morning, this one had me sat in a nice bar called the Sky Lounge, with a beer beside me and nothing but my nifty 50 to use. Of course this also meant I had to shoot through the glass, so I no doubt confused other people in the bar as I huddled under my jacket with my nose pressed to the window.
Sky Lounge is a pop-up bar and I understand they’re on location until April – hopefully they will be successful enough to make it a permanent residence, though I also hope the glass doesn’t get too smudged or scratched to spoil the view a little. There are a couple of cool doors in the walls that look as if they drop away to nothing, but they are purely for ventilation and, upon opening one of them – hoping to have a nice doorway which stood 32 floors up with nothing but the ground below – I was disappointed to find that it wasn’t a potentially fatal design flaw, but a door that acted as an air conditioning. Sure, it opened, but a piece of slatted metal in place let a bit of air in, but nothing for me to peer out of enough to take shots without glass in the way.
Still, I was pretty happy with how this shot turned out, it certainly was one of the best shots of the night. I then went to a club and tried to take some shots, but even at ISO 3200 and f/1.8 I had many issues with lighting and blurring…any tips for nightclub shots, please let me know.
—————————————————————–
And finally, fellow London photographer James Murray has just started a new blog which I hope to see continuously updated with excellent images from London and afar. James specialises in HDR and is one of the first people I started following when I was learning. I urge you to make the time to visit his blog at Think James Photo and check out his work, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
Urban Jungle
On Saturday I decided it was about time I went to see the London Street Photography Exhibit which has been on at the Museum of London for the past few months. I had attempted to see it when the exhibit had first opened, but being the opening day it was just too busy, and the queues too long, that I didn’t bother. This weekend just gone was the last weekend it was going to be open so it was very much a ‘now or never’ situation. It wasn’t amazing, but it was good to visit and I’m glad that I went to it.
After this I had a few hours to kill so walked around randomly; at one point I stopped on a park bench to have a cup of coffee and snapped this image from that location.
I was shooting hand held, having opted to walk around without my tripod or large camera bag. I have just bought a Black Rapid camera strap which I already love, and enjoyed walking around with this and not having to lug my heavy gear around, which the tripod is the main culprit.
The Beach
Back to the far north of Scotland for today’s shot, and a beautiful isolated beach section which was covered in interesting looking rocks which I ran between, splashing around in the ocean as I subjected my toes and my tripod to the harsh sand and sea.
My toes loved it, apart from the fact the water was so cold.
My tripod didn’t seem to mind the temperature, but hated the sand for the rest of my trip.
I would happily spend night after night on this beach if I lived in this area, and this sunset and blue hour was pretty darn beautiful with some of the best light I’ve been able to shoot in to date.
Gherkin – Sunrise
Another day, another sunrise.
As mentioned yesterday, I was hoping to be up high on a central London rooftop for the sunrise yesterday as it was a bank holiday Monday – what better thing to do when you have a day off?
This is one of the shots I took from there, but it doesn’t do the sunrise justice. I’ve only seen a couple of sunrises from London rooftops in the past, but this is the first one that has simply been amazing with great light, some nice cloud coverage and an overall sense of awe.
I was pretty tired when I got home though, and slept through most of the day yesterday which leaves me with some funky sleep patterns for the remainder of the week.
Eastbourne Pier – Sunrise
After I had been down to the beach the other week to watch the sun rise and take a few shots I had turned as I walked back to the hotel and saw the lovely golden light that was now being thrown onto the scene.
For something that had been a little bit of a let down this lovely light started to make up for it. I had already put my tripod away but was still carrying the camera, so I did a couple of handheld brackets while leaning against a wall.
As the sky is the main point of interest I cropped off the beach and water that was in between me and the pier – it added nothing of interest and detracted from the scene by being so boring.
——————–
It’s a bank holiday in the UK today, and as this goes to press I’m not sure if I’ll be tucked up in bed or stood on a rooftop…hopefully the latter, in which case you’ll likely see some sunrise over the London rooftops shots in the near future.
Sunny Scotland
I can’t believe that my trip to Scotland was a month ago already!
As I may have mentioned; we were extremely lucky with the weather on our drive around this beautiful country. For a location that has a reputation of being thoroughly miserable we had sun pretty much all the time we were there; extremely lucky when I wanted to spend my time taking photos.
The only downside to this, if indeed there is one, is that I always envisage the mountains to be shrouded in mist and menacing cloud formations and not lovely blue skies. Blue sky is nice…but sometimes you want a little more for your images.
To provide a sense of scale…the rock in the foreground of this image was around waist height. The rocks in the background were much, much higher 
I’ve been pretty poor at geotagging my images from this 1400 mile trip, so I have no idea where in Scotland this actually is. If you recognise the big rock in the foreground please send location to me in a comment, email, postcard or back of a dead animal to the usual addresses. Thanks.
Eastbourne Sunrise
It’s rare that I’m up early enough in the day to see a sunrise, but this weekend I headed to the Southern coast for a BBQ and drinks and tried to make use of the chance to get up and take some early morning shots. I’m not a morning person, so getting to bed just after 2am, and getting up just a few hours later does not make me the happiest of bunnies – especially with the prospect of a long cliff walk on the agenda later in the day.
Still, I got up and headed out of the hotel early to see what kind of light this dawn would bring.
It wasn’t the greatest sunrise I’ve ever seen, even if my experience of them is limited. It was nice though, and I enjoyed getting a few shots from various angles.
The beach was pretty much empty. A few young couples were sat on the pebbles, having chosen to sit there and view the dawn rather than go home and slip into bed after a night out on the town. I also met one other photographer, James Lucas, down there. James has some excellent long exposure shots with city architecture sitting right alongside images from the seaside like we were taking today – I recommend you go ahead and check out his work.
Sun Flower
Back to Scotland for the start of this week, and to a small place called Wick. We were on our final castle ruin of the day before heading on a couple of hours drive back to where once was my home, and to a an actual house with home cooked food and running hot water which, after many days sleeping in a tent, it was a welcome thing to be driving towards.
The Old Wick castle wasn’t anything spectacular, and though I have a few images of the place I’m not sure any are worth processing…perhaps sometime in the future if I revisit them. I was determined to get something from this spot, and by this point a picture of a dead mole was looking to be the only interesting thing.
Working our way across the narrow hill towards the ruins I had seen a few of these flowers and thought they would be nice if I was able to get a shot with something behind them. My initial thought was to have the castle ruins, but none were positioned quite well enough for me. However, on the way back to the car the setting sun falling over the horizon proved to be suitable. Just behind these flowers, and in between me and the large rock formation in the background is a very long drop to the sea. I’m at one end of a horseshoe really, with the rocks in this shot being the other end, and the open section immediately ahead and to the right.
I used the 8mm fisheye and got down close to the flowers. The wind was pretty strong so getting 3 exposures of the flowers was impossible. Therefore, during processing I only used three exposures for the background mountain and sun, and a single exposure for the flowers.
You may notice that I’ve redone the header of the site slightly. I’ve introduced new images to each of the sections and added a couple of links to my 500px and Google+ accounts. I like the fact I can change the site a little just by changing the images and editing just a little of the code, and without having to redo the whole thing. If you’re on either of those sites please go ahead and connect with me…and if you’ve already done so and I haven’t added you back I’ve likely missed the notification so please send me a tweet or something to nudge me. A far less likely scenario is that I don’t like your work…but that’s unlikely as 95% of the stuff I see from people visiting me is pretty darn good.
Lone Tree
I had a mental checklist of a few things I wanted to get a shot of during my trip to Scotland. A few things I didn’t manage to get (star trails, rainbow, majestic stag beside a castle), and a few that I did (fisheye of a highland cow, castle at sunset).
One of the shots I had in my mind was of a lone tree, preferably windswept, which I could process in black and white. This one fit the bill almost perfectly.
As we drove around the Scottish countryside I was always keeping an eye out for potential trees, and many passed us by that weren’t quite what I wanted. Eventually, one did leap out at me as a potential candidate, and so we pulled up at the next available spot, I grabbed my gear and ended up walking back down the road and through a bit of a field to get to it. Steve opted to sit on the beach section where we had parked and wait for me.
After a few shots of my tree I headed along the water to meet him, and found him sitting on a rock relaxing and pointing to a tree nearby claiming I could simply have taken a photo of this one instead of walking all that way for this other.
He was right; this new tree was the one in the shot above and was a much better one than that which I had found (though of course, only by wanting the other would we have found this one). I wanted to shoot it with my nifty fifty, and due to this and the composition I once more had to kick off my shoes and socks and work my way cautiously over slippery rocks so that I could stand in the cold water, submerge the tripod and set up.
I’m a big fan of the work of Ansel Adams and so had him in mind when first capturing this scene as I knew before I even found the right tree that I wanted to do so in black and white. Though different to the image I had in my mind before starting the trip, I’m very pleased with how this one turned out.
Alone
Durness beach at the very north of Scotland was a pretty cool setting for the blue hour last week. I kicked off my shoes and socks, rolled up my trousers and spent an hour or so absolutely freezing as I splashed in and out of the water taking various shots. The combination of sand and saltwater did not go down too well with my tripod who has been grumbling ever since and is in need of a very good clean out.
The light was amazing, and having a bottle of wine down there certainly warmed me up when I needed to take a quick break and stop my toes from falling off.
I have a few more from this location, which to be honest are just different rock formations that were there – but the time I spent on this beach under that light was certainly one of the highlights of the trip.
Sunset at Eilean Donan Castle
As regular readers will know, last week I took a week out for a little holiday which involved driving around Scotland. I spent 12 years growing up in the North of Scotland, and though I had been to a few places of interest I had never taken the time to do a decent tour of the beautiful place. A week isn’t time either, but I gave it a good go and hired a car for the week, threw a tent in the back and headed out there. A big thanks must go to Steve for driving the whole way, and as we did 1400 miles in 6 days it certainly allowed us to see a lot of the country. As a non-photographer a big thanks also to stopping whenever I really wanted to do so along the route, and hanging around for longer than most friends would as I stood patiently snapping away – though saying that, armed with 3 cameras he certainly looked more of a photographer than I did at times.
The above shot is of Eilean Donan Castle and was taken at Sunset a week ago today. We had set up camp nearby and headed here as the last photo session of the day. A few other people had come to photograph the same scene this night though we were the only ones to venture down on to the rocks which I feel was the better location to get a decent foreground, and there was a nice sunset but not enough cloud cover for my liking – two awesome looking clouds were there at one point but never blew into the frame which was unfortunate.
I encourage you to check out the Eilean Donan Castle website to find out further details about this picturesque location, though perhaps you may remember it as the castle featured in the Highlander film.
Japanese Garden
One of the spaces in Kew Gardens had a Japanese Garden, with this lovely structure there.
I think the rest of my shots from this location have been a little too sunny and bright, and full of nature and flowers and leaves and stuff, so with the last shot of the bench and this shot I really was trying to go for something different and a little processing which may not be the usual from this location.
I thought that this shot worked quite well in black and white and with the main focal point being the building with everything else pretty soft.
If you remember I’m in Scotland this week – so am writing this in advance. I have no idea where I am just now as this post goes live. I could be asleep in a tent, or I could be on the open road, or I could be walking around a ruinous castle. Hope everyone is having a good start to their week wherever you are.
Park Bench
Today’s image is from back at Kew Gardens.
As I took this shot there was nothing really special about the scene itself, but I enjoyed the composition of the bench and the fact it was underneath a tree. I knew at the time I took the shot that it would have to be the processing treatment that makes the shot work.
A Black and White shot was my first thought, but it looked a little too lifeless in doing that, and so I opted to bring in a little colour and try to make the bench look like it had been kissed by the morning sun. I find the resulting image to be quite peaceful and relaxing and the bench itself to be quite inviting – certainly somewhere that I would like to sit and contemplate for a while.
Westminster Bridge
On my photowalk with Jim and John we wanted to take a few shots of this location during the sunset. We had seen some amazing clouds floating by during the few hours before getting to this spot, and the sky was clearing up leaving us a little worried about what would be left over the Houses of Parliament when we got there.
However, we were quite fortunate that we had some decent light and nice dark clouds when we eventually did work our way up the Thames to this spot.
I’ve taken many shots here in the past, including better ones, but for this shot I decided to try out the fisheye lens and see what I could do with that. I don’t have the best fisheye – it’s a fun, rather than quality, piece of glass. However it did allow me to get all of the bridge and the Houses of Parliament in which was a nice treat, and I quite like how the first section of the bridge on the right is distorted into a nice long span.
The Secret Garden
Alright, this isn’t really a secret garden, as it’s in the middle of Kew Gardens and I had to wait 5 minutes for visitors to disappear so that I could get this shot.
However, it does look a little like a secret garden and as if the structure in the middle is hiding away.
I never did get the files recovered from my corrupt card, so this location is still a little bit of a sore point for me in that I lost what were potentially some great shots. At the same time I’m enjoying working my way through the ones that I did take and pulling out a few which I want to process, it’s certainly refreshing on my eyes to process nature in full daylight. I’m so used to processing night time and decay that it’s a fun challenge for me.
Have a great weekend everyone.
San Francisco Panorama
After arriving in San Francisco and getting to my hotel I was dog tired. I had slept no more than 3 hours the night before due to a little rooftopping trip, followed by a 10 hour flight (I can’t sleep on planes) and, on my time, it was nearing 11pm. Still, I knew if I crashed now I would be out for hours and waking up at stupid o’clock – not to mention wasting the evening in San Francisco.
I showered, shaved and ironed the shirts I would need for the days ahead and then headed out to the conference centre to grab my pass for the week. After this I grabbed food and this revived me a little, and then started to walk. Boy this place was steep!
After an hour or so I thought there would be no way for me to walk to the Golden Gate bridge in time for the magic hour, and this was the place I really wanted to be, so I jumped in a cab up there and arrived as the light was starting to fade.
Unfortunately I was stood at the park area at the top of a hill, and having never been here before I had no knowledge of how to actually get down to the base of the bridge. I could see a few cars down there, but couldn’t see where the road went due to the hill I was on blocking my view. I contemplated making my way down the hill itself but the last thing I wanted was a sprained ankle, or worse, from an unsteady slide down there – I had no idea just how steep or unstable the terrain was.
After 10 or 15 minutes wandering from side to side I decided to follow my gut and move away from the bridge to the right in the hope it would lead me down. I went under a tunnel, and around a winding path, but there was still no clear indication as to whether this route would get me where I wanted to be. Plus it had now started to rain.
I whipped out the iPhone and clicked on the Google Maps app. In satellite view mode it seemed to take an age to load the maps, all the time getting darker and the rain getting heavier. Finally the map loaded and I could see the actual road beside the water, and found that I was indeed on the right path to get me down there, so full speed ahead and 10 minutes later I was heading back to the bridge on ground level.
The image above is very light in comparison to the light I was seeing at the time, I guess that’s the beauty of a longer exposure. I think I actually managed to fluke getting there at the ideal time. The cars that were there had left due to the rain and the lack of light and it left me to sit on the wet ground taking this panoramic shot in peace; nothing but the gentle crashing of the waves and a few seals around me.
I didn’t spend too long here before the cops came in and shut the place up to pedestrians, so I walked a little further down and took a few photos from a nearby fishing pier, and then started a very long walk back to the hotel. I got 4 out of the 5 miles there before my body decided it had had enough. The rain beating down on me, the amount of walking I had done and the lack of sleep made me want nothing more than to grab a cab…something I soon realised is not easy to do in this city. Eventually I grabbed one, pretty much jumping on the bonnet as two people got out, and was back at the hotel before long where I immediately climbed into bed and slept a well deserved sleep.
