CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Getting up early to catch the early light is something that all landscape photographers do.  Up here in Scotland getting up to catch the dawn light in winter is easy because of the very short days, however in the summer the opposite is true.  So yesterday morning a two hour car journey from Dunbar to catch the dawn light at Loch Tay at 5:17am meant a 2:30am alarm. Now I have to admit my head was telling me to go back to bed but I fought the urge and got into the car, stopping off to pick up a fellow photographer before heading north.   We arrived at the village of Killin and heading along the road on the south side of the loch.  All feelings of heading back to bed were extinguished on arrival at our chosen vantage point at 5am at Loch Tay when we saw the possibilities of the scene in front of us. Loch Tay was like a mill pond, the water was calm and perfectly clear and as the sun came up over the mountains in the distance the colours shifted from blue to or...

With the weather forecast of a clear day with scattered clouds after recent heavy snowfalls had us heading into the Highlands of Scotland.  We arrived before dawn at Rannoch Moor with deep snow drifts and frozen lochs presenting us with a beautiful wintry scene to photograph. A quick recce to find the best, and safe, vantage point before setting the Fuji X-T1 on the Manfrotto 190 tripod in position facing west away from the sunrise towards the mountains.   While I waited for the sun to appear I captured the shot above on the 35mm f1.4 with a 20 second exposure of scene before the dawn. I then switched to the 10-24mm wide angle zoom to give me a little more flexibility and a Lee 0.6 (2 stop) ND grad in place in preparation for the sunrise.   I put the 56mm f1.2 on the X-Pro1 and then switched to the 55-200mm to give me some extra pulling power once the sun came up.  This allowed me to get some close up shots of the sunlight hitting the ridges of t...

Yesterday morning I got up at 3:30am to drive north to The Trossachs National Park with the intention of climbing to the top of Ben A'an to photograph the sunrise.  I was joined on the trip by friend and fellow photographer Alistair Spence. Ben A'an is a 454m high hill situated next to Loch Katrine and Loch Achray. On the south side Ben A’an is forested. Even though Ben A’an is not a high mountain the views are excellent. From the peak you can see Loch Katrine, Loch Achray, and Ben Venue which is just next to Ben A’an. The translation of “Ben A’an" means “Small Pointed Peak”. When we arrived it was still two hours before dawn and, with the lack of light pollution, the stars were very bright in the night sky above the car park.  We packed our kit and then began the steep climb to the summit.  The track is well marked but very boggy due to the snow and ice melt. The sun rose in the east over the hills beyond Loch Achray, bathing the landscape...

At this time of year getting up to catch a sunrise isn't as big a chore as it is in the summer thanks to the sun coming up over the horizon at a more reasonable 07:35.  This morning the promise of clear skies had me heading out to Seacliffe  because the combination of a reasonable sunrise time and a low tide gave me the opportunity to get some closer shots of the Firth of Forth Outer Marker, which is normally inaccessible due to the tide with Bass Rock in the background. When I arrived at Seacliffe the horizon was just a purple glow so I decided to walk to the waters edge and set up the tripod to capture the scene out towards Bass Rock and Tantallon Castle.  I decided to get some movement in the surf by selecting a slow shutter speed of around 1/4 second.  This meant setting up in the surf and I quickly discovered that my right boot isn't waterproof like the left one, but I ignored my wet sock and continued shooting with the surf lapping around my ankles. ...

There was a bit of good news this morning when the March issue of Outdoor Photography magazine arrived in the post, one of my images that I had submitted for their 'Night' photography competition had been picked for the top 10 submitted images. The shot was of Calve Island off the Isle of Mull in Tobermory Bay and was taken at dawn just over a year ago.  It was taken on a Nikon D90 and a Sigma 18-50 f2.8 lens, exposure was 30 seconds at f11 and I used a tripod. While there is no prize for a runner up the fact that they chose this image is reward enough as the photography in this publication is outstanding with many of the contributors are my favourite landscape and wildlife photographers.  And there is a link to my website, so a bit of free publicity as well.   If you don't subscribe, the March issue of Outdoor Photography will be in the shops in a couple of days. The two pages from the March issue of Photography Magazine ---------------------...