CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

This morning I decided to get up and catch the sunrise down at Cove Harbour, which is located a few miles down the coast from Dunbar and is an oasis of tranquility.  After two weeks of travel and work in Japan and Portugal, Cove was the ideal place to unwind for a couple of hours before heading back to the office to prepare for the next FIA WEC event in China, which I fly out to on Sunday for eight days. Once a busy part of the east coast fishing industry, Cove Harbour is now used by a few small fishing boats that catch crabs and lobsters. All of the buildings associated with the harbour are listed and the harbour is owned by Cove Harbour Conservation Ltd.   With its old world feel and old building Cove is the ideal location for filming and has been used for major films, TV shows and fashion shoots.  With it's close proximity to Edinburgh, Cove is an ideal location for international companies to use. The shots on this page were taken on the Fujifilm X-T1 and the...

Yesterday evening the promises of a nice sunset had me grabbing the camera bag and tripod and heading out to Barns Ness in the car.  I haven't been out to the lighthouse for a couple of months and yesterday was time for another visit to one of my favourite photographic haunts in and around my home town of Dunbar. One of the techniques I haven't used for a few weeks is a long exposure using the Lee 'Big Stopper' 10x ND filter so I set the tripod up on the rocky shoreline facing east towards the lighthouse and with the sun behind me providing a distinctive glow to the scene.  With the 'Big Stopper' fitted to the Fujinon 14mm f2.8 lens, the exposure time was 90 seconds (f16 and 200ISO) so this gave me time to take some other shots on the X-Pro1 and 10-24mm f4 lens while I waited. After taking several shots of the lighthouse I moved the X-T1 and the tripod out onto a rocky outcrop, keeping an eye on the sea that was approaching high tide.  The second long ...

The ruins of Duntulm Castle stand on a rocky outcrop on the northern end of the Isle of Skye.  During the 17th century the castle was home to the chief of the Clan MacDonald of Sleat.  The castle was built in the 14th and 15th centuries, when the area was subject to feuds between the rival MacLeod and Macdonald clans. The defences were improved in the 16th century, and by the early 17th century the MacDonald's had finally gained the upper hand in the area. The castle was abandoned in the first half of the 18th century when Sir Alexander MacDonald built a new residence 5 miles to the south, robbing much of the castle's stone as building material.  Today Duntulm Castle is in a poor condition but it is still a major draw for walkers visiting Skye's Trotternish ridge. These images were taken in the evening as the sun was setting to the left of the picture.  The Lee Big Stopper was used to slow the exposure to around 120 seconds to record the movement in the sky a...

One of the 'Must See' items on our weekend on the Isle of Lewis was a trip out to the Calanais Standing Stones, an ancient monument that predates Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids.   There are several groups of stones on the west side of Lewis but the main monument is extraordinary, which is the site we visited.   An 83m avenue of stones with a circle of tall stones at it's centre and within this is a chambered tomb. At its heart stands a solitary monolith 4.8m high. Lines of smaller stones radiate from the circle to east, west and south.   When you consider that the site is at least 5000 years old, the effort to move these stones to the position on top of the hill must've been enormous. Because there were quite a few visitors when we were arrived at Calanais I decided to take the tripod and take some 90 second exposures using the Lee Big Stopper so that anyone wandering into the shot would either not appear or be recorded as a ghost image.  With t...

This evening, at the end of a beautiful sunny and warm day in East Lothian, we had a family BBQ on White Sands beach.  Of course I took one of my cameras, the X-Pro1 to be precise, to take some shots of the beach as the sun set in the west towards Dunbar.   The clouds had started to bubble up so I put the 10-24mm wide angle zoom on the X-Pro1 and fitted the Lee 10x ND 'Big Stopper' filter + the 0.9 soft grad ND filter to give me a long 30 second exposure.  The shot above, taken at 30s @ f16 iso200, was the result. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

On Thursday I went for a walk along the coastal path near Cockburnspath to find the ruins of St Helen's Church which is marked on the OS Explorer map of the area (OS map no 346). The ruins date from the 12th century and the church was heavily rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries before being abandoned in the 18th when the parish of Aldcambus was united with Cockburnspath.  The church was dedicated to St Helen and is also known as  St Helen's Kirk, St Helen's On The Lea and St Helena's Chapel. Access is via the coastal path that runs along the dry stone wall and the ruins can also be seen from the road.  The church yard is set apart from the surrounding fields by a stone wall enclosure and a few head stones and grave markers can be seen close to the ruins of the church.  Only three headstones are still standing and one is set apart from the others, that are grouped together closer in.  Markings are still visible on several of the graveston...

It's been a beautiful spring like day here in the South East of Scotland, too good to be sat at the computer, so I decided to 'down tools' and go for a walk along the coastal path near Cockburnspath to take some pictures of the remains of St Helen's Church above the cliffs - I will post shots from here in the next couple of days.  Walking along the coastal path I stopped to take in this scene looking back towards Torness Point.  I decided to get the Nikon D800 and take a long exposure (4 minutes) to get some movement in the clouds and the sea. Regular visitors to my blog may have noticed that I have been favouring my pair of Fuji cameras over the bigger and more cumbersome Nikon D800.  This is because the images quality and the size of the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and X100 are superb and ideal when out walking.  However today I decided to load up my Lowepro backpack and take the D800 along as well and I'm certainly glad I did.   The 36mp full frame sensor on t...

Another visit to White Sands beach yesterday evening for a family BBQ gave me the time to take some shots of our new backyard with the Nikon D800, 17-35mm wide angle zoom and Lee filters. The first image is a panoramic image of the beach which is, in fact, three images stitched together in Photoshop Elements 11. The second shot is looking across the beach towards the lighthouse at Barns Ness using a Lee 10x ND filter to give a 30 second exposure which has blurred the fast moving clouds. The final shot is looking west across the beach as the sun started to head towards the horizon. Images taken on Nikon D800, Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 AF-S ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 helpin...

The first of the ten days I will be spending in Le Mans working on the famous 24 Hour race was a slow one as far as work was concerned so I decided to do a bit of exploring.  I headed north out of the city and into the countryside.  One of the places I passed through was the small town of Beaumont sur Sarthe with it's beautiful medieval architecture and old bridge spanning the Sarthe river. I stopped in the small square outside the Hotel de Ville and walked back over the modern bridge to get a shot of the town and the river.  Using the Lee 10x ND filter and the tripod I took this 30 second exposure of the scene below.   Here are some other shots of the town square and of the river from the old bridge using the Fuji X100.  CLICK HERE for more on Beaumont sur Sarthe. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS B...