Category: Landscape

Sunlight striking Dumgoyne and Dumfoyne

The walk along a short stretch of the West Highland Way between Easter Carbeth and Dumgoyach is becoming one of our favourite short walks for a Sunday afternoon wander. The views to the Campsies and even Ben Lomond in the far distance when meandering down the well trodden track towards Dumgyach are simply stunning. I will never tire of these views. Especially with the ever changing and unpredictable Scottish weather. The light hitting the mountains and the atmospheric cloud formations are just never the same.

This is the view to Dumgoyach, Dumgoyne and Dumfoyne taken early on in the walk on a dreich day with flat lighting at the end of June.

Two weeks ago, a mixture of sunshine and fast moving clouds created a spectacle of light spots and light trails travelling across the forrests and the mountains. The monochrome photo above is, without a doubt, my favourite shot of the day, capturing a narrow band of light moving swiftly across the trees and foot of Dumgoyne and Dumfoyne. Below is the colour version.

It is not just the views that make this a wonderful walk. A slight detour from the track into the field to the South East of Dumgoyach is well worth it to explore the standing stones and admire Dunthreath Castle in the shadow of Dumgoyne. But I’ll keep those for a future post.

Spot of sunlight on Slackdhu Crags

With the unpromising weather forecast this weekend, we changed our minds and took a wander across Muirhouse Muir instead of venturing further afield as intended. We started off  at the lay-by on the A81, about a mile South of Strathblane, and headed through the delightful little Nature Reserve and along Loch Ardinning to the Muir.

The circular walk over the Muir is on of my favourite walks in and around Glasgow and always makes for a great afternoon walk with superb scenery all around from the Kilpatrick Hills to the West, the Arrochar Alps and Ben Lomond to the North and Drumgoyne, the Campsies and Kilsyth Hills to the North and East. To top it all, the walk circles not just through a varied mixtures of moorland, but also through Scots pine and broad leaf forests with little lochs, pools and peat black streams in abundance.

The afternoon turned out to be dreich, lacking the scattered showers and spells of sunshine as predicted. It stayed dry all afternoon, with a very heavy and often very dark and brooding cloud base. The sun was notable for it’s absence with only two extremely brief, very localised appearances. So much for the weather forecast!

Thankfully, we were in the right location coming down from the Muir to Loch Ardinning when a spot of sunshine travelled swiftly from West to East, providing a brief opportunity to capture the spot hitting the Campsies above Dunblane and below the Slackdhu Crags under a very dark and brooding sky.

I am very pleased with the unexpected photo, warranting an framed enlargement or even a print on canvas.

Lonely Scots pine on the muir

It had been quite a while since we had a wander out over Muirhouse Muir, but on Sunday we decided to head there instead of going further afield due to the weather forecast as you may already have read in my previous post: Spot of sunlight on Slackdhu Crags.

We did not just venture out on the Muir, but took time to get to one of my favourite photographic spots on the Muir, located in the dip behind the rise from Loch Ardinning and flanked by the central heights with the cairn to the East and the forest at Craigmaddie burn to the South.

When following the path circling round the dip, through the forest and up to the cairn, this Scots pine (and it’s substantial neighbouring bushy tree) will look boring and unpromising, but venturing of the path into the dip and closer to the two trees presents wonderful opportunities.

The Scots pine can easily be singled out from varying angles (to get rid of the uninspiring bush) with fantastic backdrops of Drumgoyne, the Campsies and/or Ben Lomond. On Sunday, it was overcast with dark skies and limited visibility, so it proved to be a great opportunity for a monochrome image with a backdrop of Drumgoyne and brooding skies above.

These are some of the images from my archive showing the same location at varying angles at different times of the year throughout the past 11 years.

The first shot was taken on Sunday.

The second shot, taken on film in 2003 shows the absolutely wonderful tree stump as well as the ‘lonely’ Scots pine with the adjacent bush.

The third shot taken in 2008 shows the same view, with the bush now doubled in height and the ‘long gone’ tree stump. Today this bush is doubled in height again.

The last three shots show the Scots pine isolated from the uninspiring bush from different angles and at different times of the year taken between 2009 and 2013.

Mugdock bluebells

On our regular walk at Mugdock, Lola and I decided to divert and go through the woods up the hill along a very narrow trail rather than our usual walk along the loch. And a good choice it was, as the wooded area, completely out of view from the main path below was carpeted with bluebells.

Dunure Castle sunset

The coast at Dunure castle is one of my favourite locations for a Sunday afternoon, wandering round the old harbour, exploring the castle, scrambling along the rocky shore and admiring the views across the water to Ailsa Craig. In winter time, the Sunday afternoon’s wander becomes even more rewarding with the sun setting well before it is time to head back to the city for a Sunday night roast.

On the afternoon of the second Sunday in November, I took a large amount of photos round the harbour and the castle, but these two sunset photos are my favourite.

Clouds over Ailsa Craig

The island of Ailsa Craig is a prominent feature visible from nearly everywhere along the Airshire coast. The dome shaped island is a volcanic plug left behind by an extinct volcano in the Irish Sea and is nick named Paddy’s milestone because is is halfway between Glasgow and Belfast, as the crow flies.

If you like solitude, the 220 acre island with a ruined castle, a small cottage, a lighthouse and a granite quarry is for sale for a mere £1.5m.

Sunshine and snowstorms

On a day of snow showers and sun, we headed up to Loch Ardinning and Muirhouse Muir to walk to the cairn on the Muir. When driving up through Milngavie, it became very dark and grey. Shortly after, the snow hit us. We drove on, as the day had been a mixture of snow and sun, hoping it would shortly clear up again for our intended walk.

We parked at the weir at Loch Ardinning and waited for about ten minutes in the car until the snow wore off before heading along the path beside the loch.It wasn’t long before we were walking in glorious sunshine. With Lola mooching through the high grasses, we were admiring the views to Drumgoyne and Arthur’s seat with a fresh covering of snow.

We reached the cairn and after a brief rest, headed back. As you can see in my previous post, the snow storm started to approach us fast shortly after leaving the cairn. Thankfully, when the snow hit us, we already had past the turn and had the strong wind behind us for the walk back to the loch and the car.

Not just cold and miserable, the horizontal snow across the loch was nearly a white out.

Walking back in the snow storm didn’t stop Lola from venturing of the path and running through the undergrowth and high grasses in search for phantom voles and rabbits. We marched on to the dry comfort and warmth of the waiting car.

Snow storm approaching

While out on Muirhouse Muir in glorious sunshine, black clouds started to roll in from the North East. Shortly after we could see a wall of heavy snow fall rolling down the Kilsyth Hills, filling Glen Glazert in minutes and heading our way fast.

We swiftly headed back from the cairn on the Muir to the Loch while admiring the dramatic view unfolding literally in front of our eyes. I only stopped twice to take a few shots.

I’m chuffed with capturing the dramatic sky, as from the moment we spotted the black clouds to the snow hitting us was around 5 minutes.

The first three are from a sequence of two shots taken while on still on the high ground, obviously the first two being a monochrome and colour version of the same image. The third giving more of a 20:20 view. The last shot was taken while part way down towards the loch, just before the snow hit us.

A sgor and a Scots pine

I have never lost my passion for black and white landscapes, but had lost my way a bit with my own images. Since going digital, I have never really got the hang of converting my own shots to black and white. Yes, I got a few good ones over the years, but I never seem to achieve the desired and satisfied results.

Now I have got myself a licence of Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin to Lightroom, I am finally achieving the desired results that I was wishing for and consequently have found my spark back.

I am slowly going through my back catalogue and re-converting some mediocre black and white images with surprisingly good results.

The highlight so fare, without a doubt, has been the above image of Sgorr Dhearg taken from the North end of Glencoe Loch in November 2010. I am not only chuffed with this new version when viewed on the computer, but I am actually over the moon with a large print on Da Vince heavy fiber paper. The framed and mounted print is just superb.

Originally, I made several attempts to convert the below shot of a lonely Scots pine on Muirhouse Muir. These were either flat, lacking depth and contrast or had loss of detail in the Scots pine’s needles. Without any sweat, at the first attempt, I got the desired result using Silver Efex Pro.

So anyone who is into black and white photography, must check out Silver Efex Pro.

No snow but wonderful light

The majority of the country ground to a halt due to extreme snow falls, but we are out of luck. Absolutely no snow to be seen here. Although I suspect there must be snow on the high grounds, the low cloud base completely obscured any mountains capped with snow.

So my plans to spend part of today photographing snowy landscapes has unexpectedly fallen by the way side. Thankfully, the light was wonderful with the sun fighting to shine through the cloud base.

Views of Sigiriya

The Lion’s Rock, or Sigirya in the local tongue, is a dominant volcanic rock rising some 1,000 feet above the central planes of Sri Lanka and is distinctively visible from all directions.

Sigiriya has had a very long and turbulent history, from being inhabited in pre-historic times to becoming a Buddhist monastery in the 5th Century B.C., before being captured by King Kashyapa’s to build his splendid palace in the 5th Century A.D., and finally returning to be a Buddhist monastery after the king’s death until the 14th Century A.D. But more about the archeology, history and legacy of the Lion’s Rock in various upcoming posts.

We were lucky to witness this fantastic sunset from the terrace of the superb Kandalama hotel shortly after our arrival while sipping on a fresh mango juice. The Kandalama hotel was a fabulous experience in itself, but I will leave that also for a future post.

The next morning our guide drove us to Sigirya via the senic route, giving us the opportunity to view the fabulous rock across Kandalama Wewa. Due to the dry period, the water level in the reservoir was so low that the dead trees provided an eerie foreground to the prominent rock.

This final panorama of Sirgiriya is taken from the extensive gardens surrounding the rock on our walk in to a long but very rewarding climb to the top.

The Whangie

The Whangie (‘whang’ being slang for ‘thick slice’) is a massive gash in the rock face below Auchineden Hill. There are various scientific explanations given as to how this geological wonder was formed including glacial plucking and an earthquake. However, a much more interesting and colourful explanation is the myth that the Whangie was formed by the Devil flicking his tail in anticipation of pleasure as he flew over Stockie Muir on his way to attend a Witches’ Sabbath.

The combination of this geological wonder and the myth of it’s origin is the inspiration behind my new photographic project: capturing geological features in the Scottish landscape attributed to and associated with the devil or the occult.

Taking this image posed a real challenge, capturing the wide angle as well as the dark shadows of the rock face and the bright highlights of the cloudy sky. I briefly toyed with the idea of using multiple natural density graduates, but the shape of the sky in the composition made that virtually impossible. So I decided on taking the below nine images consisting of three sets of three bracketed images (-3, 0 and +3 stops) taken with my 24mm tilt and shift lens (shifted left, middle, right).