CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

'The best lens for landscapes is a wide angle', how many times has this advice been given?  I give it myself and on the whole I agree with this, but this is not a hard fact.  Any lens is good for landscapes and a medium to long telephoto lens is also very useful and I use my 55-200mm (80-300mm equivalent) on almost every photography trip.  A telephoto lens isolates elements of the landscape and it also compresses the perspective, bringing items in the composition closer together.  For example in the shot at the top of this page of Barns Ness lighthouse, Bass Rock can be seen to the left of the lighthouse.  In this shot it looks like The Bass is just beyond the headland when in fact it is a few miles away out in the Firth of Forth.   This 'stacking' of the different elements is highlighted when the light is slightly behind the subject as in the shot below of Lismore Lighthouse in the Sound of Mull. The lighthouse is dark, the shoreline in the middle ...

After lunch in Ballachulish we headed east along Loch Leven towards Glencoe village before turning left onto the B863 to Kinlochleven.   Kinlochleven sits at the mouth of the River Leven that flows into the loch of the same name and the B863 runs the length of the loch on both the south and north shores. We spent around 30 minutes looking for a vantage point  to get a view down the loch towards the bridge at North Ballachulish but we couldn't find a good location.  So we headed back to the south side and set up on a small hill overlooking Loch Leven with a good view of the snow covered 742 metre Pap of Glencoe (Sgorr na Ciche) on the left and Beinn na Caillich, the 764 metre high peak on the right. Beinn na Caillich Pap of Glencoe (Sgorr na Ciche) With the sun heading towards the horizon we packed up and headed into Glen Coe to capture the sunset that was looking very promising.  This will be the subject of the final blog from our first photo trip ...