CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

In January 2013 I set myself the challenge of posting an average of one feature per day on this blog.  In the past 20 months I have managed to post 639 times but posting one item per day can be time consuming and I will have to scale back my efforts over the coming months due to my work load.   In the next three months I will be traveling to France, Texas, Japan, Portugal, China, Bahrain and Brazil with the FIA WEC and ELMS and I wont have the time to be able to update this blog as regularly as I have been. To maintain regular content I have decided to update this blog a minimum of twice a week until the end of 2014, posting items on Wednesday and Saturday at 17:00 (UK Time), starting today. If I can find the time to add more posts I will.  These updates will continue to be in the form of images that we have taken on our travels and comments / reviews on the camera equipment we have been using to take the images you see in this blog. I hope you will continue to visit the Ma

While we were enjoying our Italian holiday near Lake Como a couple of weeks ago the weather did decide to turn a little 'Scottish' on us at one point and the rain was coming down in buckets.   The only upside to this situation was this picture I grabbed of the rain drops forming on the underside of the railing on the apartment balcony.  The simple, almost mono, image was there for the taking and I did. There old saying that every dark cloud has a silver lining was literally the case with this shot!   Luckily the sun returned later in the afternoon and we were able to continue our Italian holiday. Image taken on a Fujifilm X-T1 + Fujinon XF55-200mm f3.5/4.8R OIS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ----------------------------------------

On Wednesday I travelled to Paris for meetings ahead of the resumption of the FIA World Endurance Championship next month.  I normally stay near to the office just off Avenue Kleber, situated between the Arc de Triomphe and the Trocadero but for this trip I found a very good deal on a hotel near to Montmartre and, with one eye on the 2014 expenses budget and saving a bit of money, I decided to book in for the night.  I had visited the area in July 2012  but I hadn't taken any images of the Sacre Cour at night and so the opportunity was very welcome.  Luckily the weather was also favourable and the rain that was a feature of my last visit to Paris was not evident when I headed to the hotel on the Metro to check in after I had finished for the day at the office. The room I was given was on the 8th floor and when I went to the window I looked out over Montmartre and the Sacre Cour (see image above).  I had travelled to Paris with just the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and with

The Italians have a desire to build churches in some of the most beautiful positions in the mountains surrounding the Italian Lakes.   This little church was built into the mountainside above the town of Porlezza on the banks of Lake Luggano near to the border with Switzerland. A waterfall was cascading down the rocks alongside the chapel and running through the town to the lake below. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support this blog - thank you for helping ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION If you like what

Just off the beach at Bathan's Strand near the Tyningham Estate is a headland known as St Baldred's Cradle. The area provides a great location to take pictures of the length of Tyningham beach out to Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. In August the area around East Lothian, and the rest of Scotland, turn a glorious shade of purple as the heather comes into flower.  There are several patches of heather on the headland and here are some of the shots I took during a walk last Friday morning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support this blog - thank you for helping ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGE

The last few days I have been using the Fuji XF60mm macro lens a lot with different subjects.  I spotted this Speckled Wood Butterfly (Parage aegeria) inside the house on the window, the sunlight providing the perfect back lighting.   I used the X-T1 with the 60mm + the two extension rings to increase the magnification.  Setting the manual focus to the closest point I got as close as possible to the butterfly without disturbing it and took several images of the patterns in the wings. I decided to keep the aperture at f4 or less, which gave me a very shallow depth of field, which focuses the viewers attention on part of the wing.  I set the camera to 8 frames per second so I could capture three of four shots in one burst because the butterfly was moving and the focus point would move between each frame shot. As hoped at least one shot in the sequence had the correct focus point. After a couple of minutes I opened the window to allow the butterfly back into the garden.

Yesterday morning I got up before dawn to head up to Innerwick Castle.  I last visited the ruin in May ( SEE BLOG HERE ) taking some overall images of the structure which is located on a rocky outcrop inside the Thornton Glen Nature Reserve.   Because the trees and vegetation had grown up around the castle there was no clear view of the castle so I decided to take close up images of the structure in the early morning light using the 10-24mm f4, 60mm f2.4 and 55-200mm lenses. I also decided to take some close up images of the vegetation in the stonework and in the trees surrounding the castle. Images taken on a Fujifilm X-T1 or X-Pro1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support th

Some more images from our recent walk out on the Tyningham Estate. Near to Link Woods we came across a patch of large mushrooms growing in the grass.   The top of the mushroom was 15cm across and stood about 20cm off the ground.  There were several smaller 'puffball' mushrooms in the grass on the bank, which were smaller versions of the large open mushroom.   These are a type of Parasol Mushroom, Macrolepiota Procera, and these specimens were a good size for this type of mushroom.  According to the reference book they are also edible but I don't think I will be preparing a fry up, just in case. Using the X-Pro1 and the 14mm and 60mm macro lenses I captured the following set of images. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee fo