CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Over the past couple of months during the Coronavirus lockdown here in Scotland I have been taking a long walk around Belhaven and Dunbar as part of my daily exercise and my iPhone has been my camera of choice during this time.   Since buying the iPhone 11 at the beginning March I have been highly impressed with the quality of the images and video and while it will never replace my Fujifilm X Series system, it means I have a high quality camera in my pocket at all times. To improve the flexibility of the iPhone I bought into the Moment lens system.   QUALITY LENSES Moment are a Seattle based company producing, arguably, the world's best mobile phone lenses.  There are plenty of options to add addition lens options to your mobile phone camera but a lot are cheap plastic or glass that produce low quality results.   On the other hand Moment lenses are proper optical glass in a metal housing that fit into a Moment phone case with a bayonet mount for security....

My first post of 2017 is part of my New Years resolution and that is to get the maps out and visit some new places close to home.  I also intend to carry out some personal projects this year and one of these is to photograph the many standing stones and stone circles that are scattered around the countryside here in East Lothian and The Scottish Borders. The first images taken for this project is a site up in the Lammermuir Hills not far from Whiteadder Reservoir.  The Ordinance Survey map for the area has it marked as a stone circle near Nine Stone Rig.   I have downloaded the Ordinance Survey APP for my iPad and for a relatively small annual fee I can access every OS map for the whole of the UK.  While I still love having and using a physical, paper map, the APP is very useful. I decided to head up there this evening, parking the car off the road before hiking about half a mile up the hill to the spot where the nine low lying stones/ large boulders a...

Fujifilm X-T2 + XF16-55mm f2.8 - 250s @ f16 ISO200 This evening I headed along the East Lothian coast to Tyningham and the River Tyne Estuary at the western end of Belhaven Bay. The rock formations at the end of Belhaven are amazing and on checking the Tide Timetable I noticed that High Tide almost coincided with sunset, so I grabbed the camera bag and tripod to do some long exposure images on the shore line. Setting the camera and lens on the tripod I composed the image to include the rocky fore shore and some of the brightly coloured sky with fast moving clouds.  The four to six minute exposure time resulted in plenty of movement in the sea and the sky. Each of the the images were taken on the Fujifilm X-T2 and the 16-55mm f2.8 fitted with a Lee 0.9 soft ND Grad and the Lee 10x ND 'Big Stopper'.  Fujifilm X-T2 + XF16-55mm f2.8 - 361s @ f16 ISO200 Fujifilm X-T2 + XF16-55mm f2.8 - 291s @ f8 ISO200   ---------------------...

The fourth edition of the 6 Hours of Circuit of The Americas, which is the 6th round of the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship, took place in Texas yesterday in sweltering conditions.  The thermometer hit 96 degrees F / 36 degrees Celsius - it was VERY hot! I took the opportunity to get some shots during the build up to the race and then capture some track images as the sun went down and the race finished under the stars. Once again the event was organised very well by the US crew and Austin is a great place to visit.  Next stop on the WEC calendar is the 6 Hours of Fuji in Japan but before that I head to Belgium for the next round of the European Le Mans Series at Spa-Francorchamps next weekend. Here are some images from the build up and race taken on the Fujifilm X-T2.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY V...

The first day of the European Le Mans Series at the Circuit Paul Ricard was sunny and very warm.  At the end of the day the sun started to set behind the mountains and I went up to the top of the pit building to capture the scene on the Fujifilm X-T2 and the XF100-400mm lens. The sun went down very quickly and the sky was a fiery red that faded to blue and then black. The weather forecast for the next three days is more of the same so we will make the most of this fine weather before heading across the Atlantic on Monday for the FIA World Endurance Championship race in Mexico City. The shot below was captured on the X-Pro2 + XF35mm f1.4. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ---------------------------...

This week I was supposed to have made my second landing trip to Bass Rock in two years but the weather and the sea state has forced the postponement of the trip for the third time in as many weeks.  While this is a disappointing situation living in Dunbar where the Scottish Seabird Centre boat trips leave from means I can just keep rebooking, with the next available trip on Sunday 26 June - fingers crossed. Meanwhile I content myself with seeing Bass Rock every day I am home from the end of my road.  On Tuesday I headed down to the cliffs to watch the sun setting over the Firth of Forth and provide some beautiful light through the sea fog that was hanging around off shore. Using the Fujifilm X-pro2 and the 100-400mm Fujinon zoom lens I took a series of images as the sun headed down low before disappearing behind the cloud bank in the west. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

There is an old photographic adage that says the best camera to won is the one you have on you when there is a picture to be taken.  This was certainly the case yesterday evening when we were sitting on a bench at Newhaven Harbour in Edinburgh.   The light from the low sun was providing the perfect light for a picture of the boats and lighthouse and all I had to do was reach into my pocket for the Fujifilm X100 I usually keep there for spontaneous images when they present themselves. The image was taken on the X100 with the standard fixed 23mm f2 Fujinon lens.  The exposure was 1/320s @ f8 ISO200. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------...

One of the great things about living in Dunbar is it has a working fishing harbour and there are always plenty of things to focus my lens on during the year ( see yesterday's blog ). With high winds and rain lashing the East Coast of Scotland today, it certainly isn't a day for photography or for fishing so I decided to work on some of the images I have taken in 2015. This image is of the fishing boat Arcturus which is one of the largest trawlers in the Dunbar fleet.  The shot was taken in September from the cliff tops over looking the approach to the harbour entrance, which is situated below the ruins of Dunbar Castle. The light was just perfect as there was a little bit of sea fog out in the Firth of Forth, which was diffusing the light as the sun set behind me to my left, producing some wonderful colours. This shot was taken on the Fujifilm X-T1 and XF50-140mm f2.8 + the 1.4x converter.  --------------------------------------------------------------...

While Paris is my favourite overseas destination, no8 on my Top 10 list is closer to home and this is the Lighthouse at Barns Ness. The iconic coastal shape of the lighthouse is universal around the world and we have plenty of examples along the East Lothian shoreline.  The lighthouse at Barns Ness is just east of Dunbar and is just 5-miles from my front door, making this very accessible for a spur of the moment shot. This image was taken in early March at sunset and the long exposure has made the very calm sea a blank canvas.  I placed the lighthouse on its outcrop of land in the top third of the image to give it a standard 'rule of thirds' landscape composition. The low sun has given the image a warm glow and this, coupled with the long exposure. gives a calm and peaceful feel to the composition, which is very different to the 'wild and windy' images I usual come back with from this part of the Scottish coast. This is why I have chosen this image to be no8...