Scottish isolation

an overlooked image, taken but then not actually processed for ages.. love the combination of warm and cold in the sky and the farm house all alone in the earthy tones of the scottish hills.

Wheatsheafs all tied up

Home.. each year a local farmer still does the one field in the traditional manner tiding the sheafs/stooks by hand. only seems to take a couple of days but is well worth the effort for the images they offer :)

amongst the bull rushes

a trip to the end of the world, well the southern most tip of canada anyway..

Snowdonian memories

taken on a day out hiking Snowdon (up the pyg trail and down the miners trail) with my father. a clear day but the UV creates a sense of depth in the image with the colours washing out with distance. don't know who the couple are but hopefully they had a great day out on the hills

Technological progress?

on a journey through scotland, this had virtually no processing just struck me the devastation of the forests to make space for the wind farms and renewable energy.

hidden wildcamp

one of my favourite wild camp spots. a small run of flat grassland surrounded by rocky ledges and epic views.

This is my Terra Nova Southern Cross 1 tent. a great bit of kit that stands up to the worst of the British weather.

tilted tree

one of the most photographed trees in the world apparently. an oak in northumberland set directly in a dip of Hadrians wall.

taken with a lens baby on full tilt to produce this extreme fall off effect.

the swiss ideal

after spending some time living in Switzerland I decided I should at least give skiing a try.

but it didn't last long and I returned to taking photos instead, still the ski lifts were very welcome !

Brecon tonality

my first focus stacked image.. this image isn't really all that special from a single shot, but taken as 12 images and then stacked to ensure focus throughout there is a much greater sense of the drama this scene held.

Tree on a hill

the first landscape image taken with my Fuji GFX medium format camera.

Just a few minutes from home, it was a misty day so i set out for another photo.. but after that failed from too much mist I took a detour down some un explored lanes and came across this lone tree at the edge of the mist.

I don't think my previous camera would have really captured the dynamic range of the mist with the light and the shadows. something very cinematic about the images the camera produces.

model Dorset

taken with a tilt shift lens to produce that toy/model village appearance.

Durdle Door in Dorset, hope to some of my happiest memories.

Avenue of the king

Through work I spend a lot of time in Paris and tend to stay in Versailles. just a short walk from the hotel is the palace and the gardens.. whilst these are clearly stunning, I prefer the landscaped parkland that surrounds the palace and this is a long avenue that runners and dog walkers use each day to clear their minds and prepare for the day ahead.

little falls

on a trip through the american north east to experience the fall.
absolutely stunning but quite a challenge to capture on photos without the contrast of greenery to highlight the flame reds and and golden yellows. this was an area that offered a glimpse of the greenery alongside the turning leaves.

Scottish Crofting

so much of the scottish coast is beautiful, isolated but not really that spectacular. this captures a typical photography day for me walking with a very heavy pack of camping gear and camera equipment. hiking out to a spot that is lovely to be in, but lacks any real drama or focus..

but perhaps a great spot for building a home though :)

lone rock

on a motorbike ride through Switzerland I spotted this rock and tree stood together. they felt out of place in the scene and after a couple of hours waiting there was enough light on the far slopes to make the image work.

amongst the bluebells

I honestly don't recall where this image was taken, but I was actually out photographing wildlife with a pretty large lens, I think my 600mm.

after following a buzzard across a few fields I found this scene and knew I had to walk a good few miles back top the car to get a different lens.. by then the light had softened and improved also so it was well worth the effort.

northumbrian tree

Another image of the tree in the wall. this time taken to maximise the drama.

An unusual focus stack of the foreground, the tree and the wall leading away, taken at relatively wide apertures but then stacked together to limit the focus only where I wanted. Could perhaps have been taken with a tilt shift, but the focus line is not quite straight and I wanted a subtle fall off that the tilt shifts rarely give.

Black Cuillen Ridgeline

an epic setting that doesn't really capture well on film.

the black Cullen ridge on the Isle of Skye. I traversed it some years ago in my naive foolhardy days when I felt immortal. this trip I camped out overnight to get the early morning sunlight. I was trapped in my tent all night by rutting deer right outside the tent but the sunlight in the morning (after 5 days of content rain) was well worth the restless night.

this image is a single 24mm framing, but about 6 exposures to focus stack and get the light as desired.

the first images has both a rainbow and a golden eagle flying around, but even straight out of the camera they looked like they had been photoshopped in so they remain in my un processed archive.

of note is this image needed exposure bracketing but also polarisation on the lens to cut through the haze. I still tend to use graduate filters rather than processing HDR though, feels more like real photography to get it right in camera somehow. but sometimes like this the range is just to too much and you require both.

Posts of the Longmynd

A walk with the parents. the longmynd is a gorgeous ridgeline that runs north south and is often home to gliders and paragliders for the constant and predictable thermals that are created.

woodland tunnel

a local walk. perhaps one of my favourites straight from my home.

the walk has four sections, first a walk across fields down to the river, then along the river stopping occasionally to see if there are kingfishers to photograph. then this section through the woodland, bluebells in spring wild garlic in autumn, then along a meandering section of the river with lots of pools and weirs.

it finishes conveniently at a pub :)

to the grindstone

an old scottish mill stone. lost to time and easily overlooked by the edge of a stream long since uninhabited.

Glen Garry Cairns

I think I was rather fortunate on this particular day.. the weather was bright but stormy and each framing had the sky in just the right position for me.. I must have been good the week before!

I wish I have left a bit more space on the left of the image for the river/loch but my tripod had broken and I was left to handhold at my widest focal length rather than setup a panorama.

sometimes you need to just make do and tae the photo you can rather than the one you really want.

Wiltshire Fishing

at the tail end of my favourite walk. these pools along the meandering river are a favourite for fishers and picnickers in summer.

Glen Garry

the sunlight on the foreground trees brings balance to the image and the sky. it was only after taking the image that I noticed the two trees in the centre perfectly frame the bridge on the loch.. was tempted to process the bridge out but it is what it is.. i don't like to mess too much with the images.

Lock Awe Reeds in the morning

the site of my morning swims for a week... a stunning spot at the top of loch awe.

Old Man o' Storr head in the mist

the approach that most people have to the old man, it use to be a lay-by and a worn down track, these trees have since been felled and there is now a carpark and laid pathway.. such a shame that tourism always kills the very thing it's trying to exploit.

Parisien Planes

whilst most people were facing the other way looking at la tour Eiffel I was enjoying the dappled light on this little scene.

Honeycomb rock by moonlight

a well photographed spot on the Isle of Skye, but not many have set their camera in the same spot for 8 hours to get this image :) patience is sometimes a virtue.

summer at the loch

on a trip to Scotland for a whitewater kayaking course, this was my breakfast spot the first morning.

in hindsight I should have taken a second frame with the aperture set to maximise the sunstar not only the focus throughout the frame.

toy cattle

the fields next to my house. sometimes home to sheep, sometimes cattle and sometimes with the help of tilt shift lens home to toy cattle too :)

Mourn ing glow

Taken on a trip to Northern Ireland with my friend Colm. we had a little jack russell along for the walk and he needed help scrambling the steeper inclines.

Scottish Kelp

a REALLY flat day for the weather, driving around the upper west highlands and I came across this small harbour covered in Kelp.. the lack of bright sunlight really allowed the kelps color to push through in the image.

Model Spey

a little scene from the very north of scotland. a scene of sustainable living perhaps... doesn't look too inviting if I'm honest! not sure it would sustain me for too long.

Skye and the Old Man

a classic framing of a much photographed location.. but every shot is different and this is my take on the image. i was on the hill for about 6 hours waiting on a break in the clouds long after everyone else had taken shelter from the constant rain.

the Mineral Moon

it's amazing what a camera can resolve and detect.. this is a stack of 350 images taken at 3 seconds each. no colour was added simply boosting the saturation of the colours that were there in the image already.

Haystacks Tarn

a simple composition from a complex landscape. but I like it, it has a sense of stillness and timelessness.

autumnal avenue

a misty walk through the old beeches. so fortunate to live in this place and time.

wilderness

start of the walk up

start of the long walk into the heart of the Cuillens on Skye. a scene many will know from their travels across the island.

Lone Oak

an old oak ravaged by time.. stands alone in a field by my home.

Rays over Bowfell

whilst it may not appear like it, this was no more than a 5 min break in the torrential rain and low cloud that had lasted for days. but sometimes the best images come from those moments and fortune favours those who brave the weather for non assured hope!

the sun awakens all

a morning i remember well.. stags rutting the night before and I saw a Scottish wildcat out in the wild on my way back to the car.

this image was a nightmare to take and process as I wanted flare, but not too much and the lens behaviour of my 24mm didn't allow for both.. so I switched to a 50mm lens and took a panorama instead allowing me to have the intense sun flare without loosing the saturation across the whole image.

ring of trees

each day on my drive out of the village I drive past a ring of trees in a field. this isn't the image I want of them, but one day I will get the image I really want of them standing in the backlit mist.

great gable panorama

taken on a walk across england coast to coast. it took 5 days camping along the route. I would highly recommend it to anyone its not too challenging and the scenery you get to absorb yourself in is simply stunning.

obviously I had to limit the amount of camera equipment i carried (no tripod even!!)

this was from day 2 in the heart of the lake district.

Cuillen's from Elgol

another classic image simply because of the easy accessibility, but hopefully this take on the scene captures the sense of drama this coastline has and the ruggedness of the landscape.

in the still of night

one of the most photographed castles in the world.. eileen donan on the west coast of scotland.

difficult to compose something original that hasn't been taken 100 times before..

but I needed cheering up one trip after a solid week of grey clouds and no photos so this felt like an easy keeper to reset the clock as it were..

taken at night with an ND64 filter and 45min shutter. as you can see the clouds are still showing they were that still.

scottish bracken

a landscape afire with color. taken on a walk through mile after mile of sodden ground and flooded river crossings. never mind hiking boots I needed chest high waders at points. but these images make it completely worthwhile and keep me coming back for more.