CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

My favourite time of the day to shoot landscapes is dawn, I just love being out in the fresh air and watching the sun rise above the horizon.  At this time of year in Scotland sunrise is round 4:25am, which means a very early start to get in position. Luckily, I have plenty of beautiful locations to visit here in my home town of Dunbar and Barns Ness Lighthouse, which is only five miles from my front door, ranks as one of the very best. So I checked the weather forecast, set my alarm for 3am and packed my camera gear ready for a very early start. Luckily the forecast was correct with high clouds and the potential for a fiery sunrise so I got in the car and head out to Barns Ness to set up. I was trying out a brand new tripod on this photoshoot, a recently purchased 3 Legged Thing Punks Billy carbon fibre tripod.  This was replacing my sturdy, but weighty, Manfrotto 055 aluminium tripod, with an option ball grip head.  The 'Billy' was almost the same height...

The circuit at Spa-Francorchamps is famous for two things - producing fantastic racing and for it's changable weather.   Today is race day for round 2 of the FIA World Endurance Championship and the sun is shiny for the first time this week so when the opportunity arises to take a sunrise over the circuit and the Ardennes forest you just have to take the picture. The shot at the top of the page was taken on the Fujifilm GFX50S and the GF32-64mm f4 with a Lee 0.9 ND Soft Grad filter.  The shot below was taken on the X-T20, which I also have on test but have to admit I have been neglecting in favour of its medium format brother.  I will be taking the X-T20 trackside later today alongside the X-T2 to give it a proper test. Fingers crossed the weather stays fine for the race which starts at 14h30 local time. CLICK HERE for more information on the FIA World Endurance Championship CLICK HERE  for more information on the Fujifilm GFX system --------...

Since the end of August I have been on a whistle stop world tour with the FIA World Endurance Championship and European Le Mans Series with eight events in eight countries (France, Mexico, USA, Belgium, Japan, Portugal, China, Bahrain) on three different continents (Europe, North America and Asia).   I do love my job but it is hard, long work and I look forward to go somewhere quiet closer to home.   It is why we decided to relocate to East Lothian in the South East of Scotland in 2013. On Friday morning the chance of clear skies had me heading out to White Sands on the other side of Dunbar to capture the sunrise at one of my favourite places - Barns Ness Lighthouse.  It was 3 hours past low tide and the shoreline was perfect for a long exposure image and the waves lapped the beach.   The temperature was below freezing and the sand dunes at the back of the beach were covered in frost.  It was certainly very different from the sunsets I was...

Today is the last day of my latest trip to Japan and once again it has been an absolute pleasure to visit the Land of the Rising Sun for the sixth time.  I never get tired of discovering new things in this country whose people are welcoming and the culture ancient and respectful.   Of all the places I have visited, Japan has to be second only to Scotland on my list of favourite countries. On this trip we visited Nikko National Park before heading to Fuji Speedway for the seventh round of the FIA World Endurance Championship and I have a lot of images for several features which I will be posting over the next few weeks. This is the shot of the sunrise yesterday morning over Mount Fuji.  I watched as the sun hit the clouds and then lit up the top of Japan's sacred mountain (Fuji San).   I was going to get some more shots of Fuji San this morning before I headed back to Tokyo but the beautiful weather that we have enjoyed for the past five days has gone an...

This weekend I am in Belgium for the fifth round of the 2016 European Le Mans Series at Spa-Francorchamps. On arriving at the circuit for the first day of track action this morning, we were greeted with a beautiful scene over the Ardennes forest with mist hanging just above the trees. Using the Fujifilm X-T2 and the XF50-140mm f2.8 I captured these images before the light changed.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION MacLean Photographic run Tours and Workshops in East Lothian and th...

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...

After several long haul trips to Japan, China and Bahrain, with shorter flights to France and Portugal over the past couple of months, the racing season is drawing to a close. I have travelled to some wonderful places and have shared some of my exploits on this blog, but it has left me little time to get out and about with the camera closer to home in Scotland.  I intend to remedy this situation and this morning I made a start by heading out to Barns Ness.   Watching the weather forecast on the BBC last night there were fronts moving across the country which meant there was a good possibility of a nice sunrise.  So I packed the camera bag and headed out to Barns Ness just before dawn.  The cloud formations above the Lammermuirs boded well and as the sun came up the clouds were lit with a red glow that slowly turned golden. I set one camera on the tripod to capture some long exposures and the other was fitted with either the 16-55mm f2.8 or the 50-140mm f2...

Sunrise is probably my favourite time of day for photography.  Under clear skies the light is amazing and can lead to some beautiful colours and strong contrasts.  Yesterday I posted some images of the sunlight hitting the water coming onto the beach ( CLICK HERE ) and those shots perfectly illustrate the reasons why I choose to haul myself out of bed at 4:30am on a summer morning. The colours before the sun gets above the horizon can be quite vibrant, as demonstrated in the image at the top of the page.  As the sun climbs into the sky the colours shifts towards the blue end of the spectrum but the light is still warm and still very contrasty. Barns Ness is a good place to capture great sunrise shots as the sun rises just beyond the lighthouse, which is a great manmade focal point for coastal images. These images were all shot on the Fujifilm X-T1 using the 50-140mm f2.8 for the first two images and the 16mm f1.4 for the third shot. -----------------...