Kinnoull Hill

After a couple of days with rubbish light, we were able to get out with the cameras again, we decided to keep it fairly local and walked to Kinnoull Hill on the outskirts of Perth. I’d remembered about a pond, that was used for the sport of curling in the olden days, from a previous trip, so we took a detour to find it again. The pond was frozen and the ice was pretty thick, certainly enough to take my weight. (Don’t play around on frozen lakes etc, it isn’t big or clever)

The real reason for choosing Kinnoull Hill, was Kinnoull Tower, a derelict tower perched on the edge of a cliff, probably a look out post to spot people coming up the Tay from the North Sea/Dundee. Its well positioned to catch the evening sun and with the Tay weaving away in the background. This afternoon the Tay was fairly full, with hardly a ripple and I really like the way this image has come out.

Also in Kinnoull Woods there are a series of wooden sculptures by Pete Bowsher (aka Chainsaw Pete), this bird of prey (looks like an eagle, but buzzard sized) was up near Kinnoull Tower.

Perthshire Landscapes

Seeing as I’m up in Scotland, amongst some stunning scenery it would be silly not to make the most of it, so along with my Dad we are trying to get out to take photographs each evening, when the light is good.

Our first evening we headed north up the A9, past Dunkeld and then left the car and headed up the hill towards a loch that we thought would catch the evening sun. After a few wrong turnings we came out of the woods into a meadow, where we should have stopped, due to the sun almost having disappeared behind the mountains, but instead we carried on for the loch, by the time we reached in the sun had already dropped. This was a great shame, as the loch was frozen and there was a pretty green cottage on the bank. I’m pretty pleased with the image below, but can’t help wondering how much better it would have been 20 minutes before.

Merry Xmas

A belated Merry Xmas to all my followers!

This shot was taken on Xmas day on the North Inch park in Perth while I was out for a pre Xmas dinner stroll in the snow, I did try a black and white conversion, but felt that this colour version worked the best.

Braunston Canal

This is the first of my posts featuring shots of canals, I’m not sure what it is about canals, I’ve only ever spent one cold weekend on a narrow boat, but there is something about canals that pulls me to them, the colours of the boats, the people but mostly it is the relaxed vibe that is always there, nothing needs to happen fast, I find that refreshing.

This morning I was travelling light, just one body with the 50mm mounted, no camera bag, no tripod etc, it made a nice change. A few shots were missed due to the lack of a wide angle, but that just means I have an excuse to go back.

 

Braunston Canal 1

Braunston Canal 1

Braunston Canal 2

Braunston Canal 2

Braunston Canal 3

Braunston Canal 3

Landscape print

Yesterday I made a large format print of one of my favourite landscape photos from 2008, this view across Derwent Water taken in December.

Derwent Water Print Mockup

The detail in the full size print is incredible,  it will be hung in a 70×50 frame and has been mounted with proportions similar to the mock up above (when it is hanging I will post a photo of the real thing).

To get to the required file size at 360 dpi for the printer we needed to create extra pixels, Lightroom 2.2 seemed to do this very well and quickly, however for the file we printed Genuine Fractals was used, this is a plug-in for Photoshop and is the industry standard for enlarging images. It had more controls than Lightroom (an took much longer to generate the file), but to my eyes the resulting 192Mb tiff files looked the same.