CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Since August 2013 we have lived in Scotland and 2014 was the first full year of living north of the border.  The year began with a day trip to photograph the snowy Highlands - Rannoch Moor, Glen Coe, Glen Etive.   Of course most the images from Scotland in 2014 have been taken nearer to home in East Lothian and the Belhaven Bay bridge is one of my favourite subjects as it is a short 5-minute walk from our house.  This image is of the bridge under the moonlight. The East Lothian coast is a mixture of wide sandy beaches and rocky shoreline.  The beach at Yellowcraig is typical of this stretch of coastline. Cove Harbour is just a few miles south east of Dunbar and is a quaint fishing village that you can almost step back in time. A bit further along the coast from Cove is the old abandoned church of St Helen's.  Perched on the top of the cliffs this ruined church, with its upturned grave markers, is a eerie place to visit, even on a sunny d...

Earlier this year I started uploading images to Picfair.com, a stock library with a difference - photographers get to set and keep the fees.  As with all new things it takes time to establish and I haven't yet made a fortune from the images I have loaded but awareness of Picfair.com is growing. Earlier this week I was asked to feature in an interview on the Picfair Blog, answering a few short questions and giving more background on seven of my images that have appeared on Picfair. The images includes three from in and around Dunbar, including the reflection shot taken at Barns Ness at the top of this page, two taken while I was away racing at Imola and Shanghai and two taken on trips to the Highlands of Scotland. The Picfair interview and the featured images can be seen HERE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicki...

So far the winter in the UK has been pretty mild with no snow at low level or temperatures dropping below freezing for long periods.  I'm sure this will change but as a photographer the lack of snow or ice to photograph is disappointing.  However in the Highlands there has been plenty of snow and ice and I captured some close ups of the ice that had formed in the River Etive a few weeks ago using the close focusing abilities of the Fujinon 60mm f2.4 macro on the X-Pro1. The shapes and textures of the ice provided a great photographic subject and using the Slik tripod with the legs splayed out I was able to get down low to capture these images. This image was captured on the Nikon D800 and Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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...

Square images are a throw back to the 6cm x 6cm medium format cameras that were favoured by wedding and portrait photographers and also some landscape photographers. Looking at the world in square is very different from the norm as we are used to looking at things in rectangular formats thanks to mainstream photography and TV / cinema screens.  It is usually 4:3 but widescreen laptops, PCs and TV screen has also introduced the 16:9 format. I decided to compose my image in square to see if I could see the world differently and it works.  The beauty of square format is editors can crop the image portrait or landscape as the page layout dictates, but I quite like this image square - what do you think? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 t...

In Glen Etive there is a dead tree overhanging the River Etive, which at this point is a series of beautiful waterfalls (see image posted on Tuesday HERE ).  The tree is a draw for many photographers as it frames the mountain and the river as it flows south into Loch Etive and then the ocean beyond. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 you see on this blog please visit our  Facebook  page and click 'like'

At the bottom of the long, winding road through Glen Etive is Loch Etive, a long body of water that opens out onto the sea at Connel Bridge by the Falls of Lorn and into Ardmucknish Bay.  In the late 19th Century Victorian tourist used to take a boat up Loch Etive to a landing platform at the estate at the head of the loch.  When I was last here in 2004 the remains of the old pier were still visible but on this trip the pier had been rebuilt to allow the foresters to load timber onto the boats to be taken down stream. We set up near the head of Loch Etive and took these images looking south down the loch. Nikon D800 - Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 - 0.6s @ f22 - ISO50 The following image was taken using the X-Pro1 and the Nikon 80-200 f2.8 and was attached to the camera using a Fotodiox Nikon to Fuji adapter.  I still impressed with the results from this combination and for £17 the Fotodiox adapter has to be my 'star buy' of 2013. Fujifilm X-Pro1 - Nikon 80-200mm f2...

At the start of this year I said I was going to produce more mono images in 2014.  While out and about in Glen Etive yesterday I spotted this scene that was just perfect for a long exposure mono image.  Using the Lee Big Stopper 10x ND filter on the Nikon D800 and 17-35mm lens I slowed the exposure down to 55 seconds to produce plenty of movement in the waterfall and in the clouds. Glen Etive is accessed by a single track road at the eastern end of the more familiar Glen Coe.  Glen Etive is not as busy as Glen Coe because the tourists tend to stay in the more famous part of the area and this leaves this beautiful glen for the people who know about it.   The road leads down to Loch Etive, which is a sea loch surrounded by tall mountains (more on that later this week). For more information on Glen Etive CLICK HERE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THI...

A chance encounter with a stag on the way back up Glen Etive resulted in this image. I only had my Fuji X100 to hand, as the Nikon D800 and Fuji X-Pro1 and their long lenses were in the boot of the car, and its fixed 23mm f2 wide angle lens was not the best solution for this shot.   Luckily the stag wasn't at all bothered by our presence and I managed to get three frames before he walked away.  I had to crop the image to get the stag large enough in the frame but the image is still very sharp despite the heavy crop thanks to the ultra sharp Fujinon 23mm lens.  The image is also big enough to print to A4 thanks to the Photo Zoom Pro4 software package I use.  This is the uncropped image taken on the X100 and 23mm f2 lens I'm pleased with the final image with the snowy mountains as a backdrop, even though it is a little 'chocolate box'.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

A day out in Glen Coe and Glen Etive is not complete without a shot of  Buachaille Etive Mòr.  This mountain is so well photographed it is difficult to get a fresh view but I tried to do my best.  The main shot was taken on the Fuji X-Pro1 and the 14mm f2.8 lens, which emphasises the clouds above the mountain. The next shot was taken down on the river but I spotted some ice amongst the rocks so I chose to focus on this as foreground interest.  This shot was taken on the Nikon D800 and Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 lens. Buachaille Etive Mòr means "the great herdsman of Etive" in Gaelic and is generally known simply as The Buachaille or The Beuckle. It is a mountain at the head of Glen Etive and its pyramidal form, as seen from the A82 road when travelling towards Glen Coe, makes it one of the most recognisable mountains in Scotland. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE ...

I like to trawl through the MacLean Photographic archives looking for hidden gems from yesteryear.  Today I was going through the 2005 archive and I found this shot from Glen Etive in the Highlands of Scotland taken on a Fujifilm Finepix S304 bridge camera.  At just 3.2MP this camera now considered to be obsolete but eight years ago this was a mainstream consumer camera with a sharp 6x optical zoom and a great sensor to capture the images. This got me thinking about the obsession with the latest spec cameras with 16+ MP and 8 frames per second motor drive etc.   Don't get me wrong, I love my Nikon D800, for my work there is no better camera, but not everyone is a professional photographer.  There seems to be a line of thinking that a more expensive camera will make you a better photographer and, to be quite frank, in 99% of cases I've come across that is complete rubbish.  My Nikon D50 was a superb camera and has produced some great images in my archiv...