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Early Autumn at Glen Affric

Early Autumn at Glen Affric

A year without a trip to my Nice Place™ just isn’t a year. It had to be done – in a moment between lockdown and further covid-19 restrictions, I nipped up to Glen Affric for a few hours.

Some intimate landscape views:

Vibrant colours in the soft light, days shortening at the start of autumn, Glen Affric.

Vibrant colours in the soft light, days shortening at the start of autumn, Glen Affric.

V…

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A Geek in Lockdown

A Geek in Lockdown

I’m comparatively fortunate in that, having spent the last 15 years working from home, the coronavirus and covid-19 have not affected me or anyone I know directly. Life has not changed as significantly as it has for others.

So, apart from staying home and doing nothing much, what’s a geek to do to contribute back?

First, contribute data. As often as I remember, I update the KCL/Zoe appto say I’m…

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In Inverary

In Inverary: World-Wide Photo Walk 2019

This past Saturday was the Word-wide Photo Walk; as has become an occasional habit, I attended the Inverary walk.

There was a trip around the Inverary Jail:

It’s ALIIIVE!! Rather too-closeup detail of a wax model at Inverary Jail.

Winter is coming(TM) Two sides of a barred doorway Inverary Jail, taken on the Worldwide Photo-Walk 2019

What shall we do with this one? Looking back it does…

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Lunan Bay

Photos and droning around Red Castle, Lunan Bay, Angus.

In general, lacking high pointy mountains, Angus always strikes me as one of the less dramatic parts of the country. However, I’ve visited the Lunan Bay area a few times and it makes a good escape for an afternoon.

There’s quite a nice beach…

Pebbles amongst sand

Decaying lump of tree bark on sand

A small floral life-form amongst the pebbles and sand.

Signs on a shed on the weay to Lunan Bay…

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Assynt, Day 2: Solus Na Madainn

Assynt, Day 2: Solus Na Madainn What I Did On My Holidays - early morning sunrise, mountains, light, rocks, waterfalls, drone. Yum.

For the second day of my holiday last Autumn, I got up – again! – at a ludicrously early hour and drove from Tongue round to the Assynt peninsula, to my favourite viewpoint for sunrise.

It was some drive.

All the way from Tongue to Loch Assynt without seeing another car. Bliss.

Take the A838 road (abused as part of the ghastly NC500 coastal route) via Durness at 5am in the pitch black,…

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Smirisary

Smirisary: rocks, geology and landscape on the West Coast of Scotland

Can’t beat Scotland’s West Coast in summer. Saturday was spent exploring a new place to me, Smirisary in Glenuig, Lochaber.

A beach of large psammite outcrops with lyprophyre dykes

Cracks and sedimentary strata lines in an exposed lump of psammite, Smirisary.

Erosion in action: an exposed lump of psammite (metamorphosed former sandstone) showing lines of strata and cracks, with gentle…

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Concerning Rocks

Concerning Rocks: an exploration of the Highland Boundary Fault at Stonehaven.

Some years ago I had a passing interest in the abstract shapes and forms rocks can take. 

Recently I was out on the Aberdeenshire coast hunting photos with a friend, who, being impressed with the rocky coastline, wondered exactly where the Highland Boundary Fault emerged at its most north-eastern extremity.

After a bit of research (particularly exploring using the BGS‘s iGeologyapp), I tracked it…

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Summer Evenings

Two photos from a stroll down the road on a warm summer evening

Lovely dark ominous clouds, throwing the bright golden sunlight on crop fields into sharp relief.

A small flock of crows takes off into the sunlight.

Prints of The Leader are available from my photography website, ShinyPhoto.

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Evening Stroll Photos

In the words of a twitter friend of mine: A few photos made whilst walking for approximately half an hour with the dog.

Nothing special – just nice low evening light and details of the pastoral landscape around.

Photos made whilst walking the dog for approximately half an hour in golden evening sunshine.

Photos made whilst walking the dog for approximately half an hour in golden evening…

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Loch Rannoch Sunset

Exploring Loch Rannoch around sunset

A few photos from Sunday afternoon’s explorations around Loch Rannoch.

We walked through the Black Woods; whilst flying the drone near Camghouran I discovered remains of a building – a pile of stones and hints of mounds in the earth possibly in the shape of a former but’n’ben croft? – in a clearing in the forest.

Walking along the path through the woods, one comes across this clearing just…

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First Munro

First Munro: a winter climb up Schiehallion

I’ve been over 3000′ twice before now – but for one I stopped short of the summit, and for the other we took the ski-lift up, so neither really counts as Munro-bagging.

In the Christmas/New-Year holiday week, friends and I spent a happy day climbing Schiehallion – a mountain we’ve known and photographed for a long time, but actually climbing it was a first, at least for some of us.

We…

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Driving the A9

Saturday’s involved driving much of the length of the A9 from Perthshire to Inverness and beyond to the Nice Place™, and back down again.

On the return, I broke the journey in two locations I’ve previously admired but never stopped at: one, outside Bunchrew outside Inverness, to admire the clear view along the river estuary to the Kessock Bridge:

Many years ago I made a photo of this…

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Life in Shades of Green

Life in Shades of Green

I used to make a point of closeup nature photos, simplifying the complexity of plant structure down to a few lines, in dull light. For the first time in ages, I spent most of yesterday afternoon with just the old Helios 58mm lens attached, walking around, seeing what could be seen. Didn’t expect ladybirds to feature at this time of year.

Detail of broom seedpods

Tree structure

A cluster of…

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Winter around Rannoch

A Winter Day around Rannoch

We made it up to the Rannoch area mid-afternoon in time to admire the pure calm stillness and misty distant mountain reflections on Loch Rannoch.

Beautiful simplicity: flat calm, mirror reflections on Loch Rannoch.

(Obligatory plug – the above image is now uploaded to my main fine-art / landscape website: Blue Stillness, Loch Rannoch.)

Drone photos also happened – flying around inversion…

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Birnam Hill: Winter

A couple of weeks ago in the middle of December, we were treated to a quick overnight blast of snow. It remains my favourite season for photography, so I staggered up Birnam Hill to fly in the late afternoon light.

Landscapes:

Snow-capped hills either side of the Highland Boundary Fault line – catching the last warm rays of sunset in the distance.

Snow-capped hills either side of the…

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First Green by Tim Haynes Via Flickr: My first aurora of 2019: nice bands of green and pink by the well-known tree at Windyedge

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ShinyPhoto: New Website

The old ShinyPhotowebsite was getting a bit long in the tooth. It saw several versions of Python come and go and increasingly suffered from bitrot. (Notably, a mutual incompatibility in the CGI module between python versions; it ran for so long the backend storage engine I used became deprecated with no easy way out but to revert to one I wrote myself – not a good reason to rely on third-party…