CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

For the past few months my work schedule has been pretty hectic and there has been little opportunity to take some landscape images around my home in Dunbar for my own pleasure.   Yesterday evening we had returned from a day in Glasgow, which had been pretty wet and overcast, and I saw that the clouds were breaking up as the sun began to set. So grabbing the camera bag and walking the 500 metres to the clifftop walk overlooking Belhaven Bay I set the X-T2 on the Manfrotto tripod to take some long exposure images.   Looking west towards The Law at North Berwick I put the XF50-140mm f2.8 on the camera and fitted the lens with a Lee 0.9 ND Soft Grad and a Lee 10x ND (Big Stopper) to give me an exposure time of 50 seconds at f22 with an ISO setting of 100. With the motor racing season resuming in just under three weeks time I intend to get out more locally to capture some more landscape images of my local area. ---------------------------------------------------...

Fujifilm X-T2 + XF10-24mm f4 + Manfrotto 190 Tripod (Zoom 10mm) - 105s @ f4 ISO200 Yesterday evening I walked across the road to the cliffs above Belhaven Bay near my home in Dunbar to see if I could spot the Aurora Borealis which had made a brief appearance two nights earlier.  I have a mobile phone app (Aurora Watch) that gives me updates and alerts me to the possibility of activity in the night sky. Unfortunately the Aurora didn't make an appearance over the northern sky but with a bright moon and fast moving clouds, I wasn't going to let the scene go to waste. Fixing the X-T2 and XF10-24mm to the Manfrotto tripod I set about recording a set of long exposures of the crashing waves below the cliffs and scudding clouds overhead.   The glow on the horizon to the west of the cliffs is the lights of Edinburgh, which is 25-miles away as the crows fly (or owls at that time of night!). With the moon going in and out as the clouds moved across the sc...

The beauty of living in East Lothian is being able to photograph the scenery in all weathers.  While I love a beautiful sunrise as much as the next landscape photographer, you can't beat a good stormy day with lots of drama to get the creative juices flowing. Take this image for example.  This shot was taken on the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and the XF100-400mm telephoto to compress the perspective, making Bass Rock appear to be a lot closer to my position in Belhaven than it actually is, which is about 7 miles away.  All I had to do was wait for someone to walk into the frame to give the image a focal point. The picture was converted to monochrome from the RAW file in NIK Silver EFEX Pro2 software using a customised preset that I have set up.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts yo...

The choice for no5 on my Top 10 list of images for 2016 is a little closer to home.  In fact it is less than half a mile from my front door.  We moved to Dunbar, on the east coast of Scotland, in 2013 and one of the many reasons we chose this location was for the views. This is Belhaven Bay taken from Winterfield golf course.  The 3km sandy beach sweeps east to west and is a favourite place for dog walkers, surfers and horse riders. The image was taken on the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and the Fujinon XF100-400mm f4.5/5.6 lens. CLICK HERE for more on this image   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...

The Apple iPhone 6S Plus continues to impress and I have added a set of Polaroid lenses to enable me to get a video variety of images with the camera phone.  The Polaroid lens set clips onto the camera lens and gives me three options - wide angle, macro and fisheye. The seashell shot above was taken using the macro adapter and the image below was taken with the standard iPhone lens at the closest point it would focus.  As you can see the macro lens allows you to focus a lot closer and the detail is excellent for a phone camera. The images were shot on Belhaven beach near our home in Dunbar using the iPhone's SQUARE format mode. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. -------------------------------------...

This evening was the first time I've been able to attempt some landscape photography since my return from Le Castellet. The weather here in East Lothian has been pretty grey and miserable of late but today a weather front crossed the country bringing a break in the clouds. After a couple of hours spent looking for new angles around Cromwell Harbour (more on that tomorrow) I headed across the road from our house here in Dunbar to one of my favourite spots overlooking Belhaven Bay on Winterfield Golf Course. Fixing the X-Pro2 to the tripod I took some shots on the 100-400mm and then some long exposures on the 18mm which I fitted with the Lee Big Stopper. Here are the results from this evenings photo shoot.  When people ask me why we have chosen to live in Scotland I just need to show them images such as these.  No words are needed.  This is our backyard! The final shot was taken on the Fujifilm X-T1 with the XF100-400mm as the sun dropped behind the cloud...

Yesterday evening I headed down to Belhaven Bay to take some long exposure shots of the Bridge to No Where on the X-Pro2 + XF16-55mm f2.8, which I posted last night. While I was waiting for the four minute exposures to complete I used the Fujifilm X-T1 and the XF100-400mm f4.5/5.6 to take some images of the waves that were crashing along the 3-mile long shore at Belhaven Bay.   The evening light, combined with the spray kicked up by the crashing waves gave the scene a mystical quality and a warm glow to the images. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOG...

The combination of high tide, a choppy sea and beautiful evening light had me grabbing the camera bag and tripod and I headed down to Belhaven Bay, just a short 5 minute walk from my front door. This shot was taken on the Fujifilm X-Pro2 fitted with the XF16-55mm f2.8, a Lee 0.9 ND Soft Grad and Lee 10x 'Big Stopper' ND filters.  The camera was placed on a Manfrotto 190 tripod and the image composed with bridge in the bottom left hand corner and the tripod raised so the top of the bridge was clear of the dark background. The final exposure time was 251 seconds at f8 with the ISO set at 200. The final image is more or less as it came out of the camera except for tweaks to the exposure, contrast and clarity in Photoshop. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping ...

Well I can finally unveil my findings on three months of testing the new Fujinon superzoom for the Fujifilm X-Series.   Fujifilm Japan asked me and three fellow X-Photographers John Rourke, Andrew Hall and Dirk Bogaerts to try a very early prototype of the lens at the WEC event at Fuji Speedway last October.  The results were very impressive despite the fact that Fujifilm had only assembled the lenses we were using two days prior.  We fed back our initial findings on returning the lenses to Tokyo on the Monday after the race.   CLICK HERE to watch the video featuring the four photographers testing the 100-400mm shown at the press conference on the 15th January. We received updated lenses for the season finale in Bahrain in November and we have been using these prototypes over the past two months and giving our feedback prior to the launch of the lens in Tokyo last Friday.  At the press conference I was on stage talking about my use of this lens and ...