Posts in Category: Scotland
3/17/2009
Dawn: Hebrides
Back to Scotland for a time. Dawn from the yard at the our B&B on North Uist in the Hebrides.
The sky dominated the landscape, but the landscape itself holds interest, with the lochs in the midground and the tiny flowers in the grass in the foreground.
Exposure was particularly difficult as all the light was in the sky, and exposing for the sky left the foreground very dark. This is a shot that requires previsualization of the what can be done in postprocessing (and what can not). Only recently, months after my first attempts, have I leaned the tricks in Lightroom that get me close to what I saw while standing there.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F4.0 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I used three graduated filters. One down from the top to darken and intesify the sky. One up from the bottom to lighten the foreground and increase both global and local contrast. One in the center to intensify the dawn colors. Plus some Fill light to bring the foreground up even more and global adjustments for Vibrance and Clarity. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Scotland.
3/7/2009
The Temple: Carinish, N. Uist, Scotland
Actually the ruins of a medieval monastery, one of several on the coast and islands of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where learning was preserved during the dark ages. Monks went out from here to reeducated Europe at the beginning of the renaissance. (Though the whole dark ages thing is coming into question these days, no one disagrees with the role the monasteries like the one at Carninish played in keeping scholarship alive.)
There is a public foot path from down-town Carninish to the ruins, including some boardwalks over marshy spots, but little evidence the site is much visited. I spent an hour or more there, walking around the ruin all alone and photographing it from a variety of angles. I have to say I was more than a little distracted by the view. The monastery was placed on a height with a commanding view of the outer islands of the Hebrides and the sea beyond. You have to suspect that the outlying walls once enclosed gardens as well. Those walls, circular as they are, lead to the alternative name of the place which is, not surprisingly, the Carninish stone circle. It must have been a pleasant place to study…in the brief Hebridean summer. In the long winter it must have been grim.
I like this angle, as it catches both the ragged shape of the ruin and the circle. The texture of the stone against the green of the Scottish turf, and the sky behind, the high horizon, and the way the shapes of the structures lead your eye.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide angle (31mm equivalent). F5.6 @ 1/320 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the sky. Added Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel. Landscape sharpen preset. I also cropped out a bit of sky to improve the placement of the horizon.
From Scotland.
Distracting view...
3/6/2009
Downtown Carinish
Just down the road from the Bed and Breakfast where we stayed on North Uist in the Hebrides. Could not resist. Something more than a snapshot, but snapshotish certainly. Still makes me smile.
It is an awkward composition, a bit. I normally would not have placed the phone booth that close to the frame, or the sheep either…but I wanted to emphasize the juxtaposition. I think it works.
Sony DSC H50 zoomed in to about 85mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky, some added Presence, via Clarity and Vibrance sliders. Landscape sharpen preset.
From Scotland.
PS.
A bit more Lighroom Work
Okay. So I was always bothered by the burned out white on the sheep’s back, and some found the sky to bright. Recently I have begun experimenting with Lightroom’s graduated filter effect, so I had to try that on the sky. And I also applied Lightroom’s Adjustment brush to reduce the brightness of the burned out area on the sheep’s back. And so…
3/5/2009
Heather Road
Most roads on the Hebrides (at least on the Uists, and Benbecula where we spent out time) are one-lane, with pull outs every 1/4 mile or so for meeting cars. It works surprisingly well. This is a local road that runs down the middle of North Uist, and it very definitely off the beaten path. We drove the length of it and did not meet more than one or two cars.
And, of course, Heather is Scotland. And so too are the plantations. We saw them all through the highlands, and here they from the green triangle on the right horizon.
I love the play of the light across the landscape in this shot, taken about 10 AM, when the Hebrides summer sun was still about as low as we get it in Maine at 6 AM.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I applied quite a bit of Recovery for the sky, added some Fill Light for the foreground, as well as Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel. I also boosted the luminance of the magenta, purple, and green channels to make the landscape and the heather, in particular, more vibrant.
From the Scotland gallery.
Close up
3/4/2009
Highlander
Okay, you can’t visit Scotland without bringing back one of these. Actually, if you use Google Earth and look at the spot where I took this, there is already an image of what is probably this very beast looking over this very fence there.
Sony DSC H50 at about 250mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, some recovery for the sky, and a little local burning of the highlights. Clarity and Vibrance in the Presence panel. Landscape sharpen preset.
From the Scotland gallery.
3/3/2009
Hebrides Sunset Loch: click image for larger views at SmugMug
We arrived on North Uist in the Hebrides, via the ferry from Skye, in the long long sunset. That far north it seems the sun hangs on the horizon for about 3 hours. As we drove down the island toward our B&B, we were just about pulled off the road by scenes like this. Just a little unnamed loch, with a fishing pier.
The light of the sun from behind the low clouds was clearly the subject, and always a challenging one. I exposed a variety of shots, metering on the foreground, the sky, the horizon, etc. To change the metering, my quick and dirty approach is to center the area of interest and use the exposure lock (half press the shutter release), then to reframe for composition. By including more or less sky in the metered position you and dramatically bias exposure, and you can immediately see the approximate effect on the LCD. This version was exposed primarily for the sky and the foreground was brought up in post-processing: though I have others were the sky is even more dominant.
I also cropped out a significant section of dark sky to aid the composition.
[I should mention that this is a Hebrides sunset. The sun was 30 minutes to an hour above the horizon and the color is from the low clouds. In the Hebrides, the sun hands at and just below the horizon for what seems like hours. It did not get dark for at least 3 hours after this shot, so the challenge of bringing the foreground up to natural levels was particular to the scene. Even this does not show the foreground as bright as it was in reality.]
Sony DSC H50 at about 800mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Besides the Fill Light and Curves necessary to bring up the foreground, I applied some Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel. Because the foreground and high clouds (away from the sun) was dark in the original, I had quite a bit of noise once the curves were set, so I used Lightroom’s noise reduction sliders to smooth out the color.
See more of Scotland in the Scotland gallery.
PS.
After some discussion on one of the digital photo groups, I decided to go back and do some dodge and burn on the image using Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush. I selectively darkened the sky half a stop, and brought up the midground hills about the same, while bringing up the foreground rocks almost a full stop. I also increased the contrast of the foreground rocks, and the saturation of the midground hills on the right. This was a quick and dirty experiment. I would work much more carefully for a keeper.
Lightroom dodge and burn
And here it is using Lightroom’s Graduated Filter effect.
Graduated Filter effect.
3/2/2009
Glencoe (Glenshiel) Scotland: click for other sizes on SmugMug
As promised, more brooding Scottish scenery.
One of the most famous views in Scotland, maybe in the world. The pass at Glencoe, with the view of the Seven Sisters (weather permitting), looking out over Fort William. Site of one of the most infamous battles in the world, the massacre of the McDonnalds by the Campbells in 1692, apparently at the order of the King of England.
Take a long look at the image before reading any further please.
The trouble with flying visits, most visits to anywhere really interesting for that matter, is that you only get one chance, one day, often one moment, to capture something that, in reality, you would prefer to spend a lot of time with, over days and weeks, to get a really satisfying image. Maybe even that “you would need to spend a lot of time with” etc.
We did stop here for about 10 minutes, and I was able to get out away from the car, up a little trail through the heather to grab this shot. But the ferry from Skye was waiting, and we had a schedule to keep.
It a case like this you take the light and the weather you get. End of story.
This was not an easy shot. The range of light in the sky was too great and exposing for the highlights left the foreground way too dark. Believe me, I tried it. Then too, the camera was not working at its best aperture and I knew there was danger of Chromatic Aberration and Purple Fringing on the exposed edge of the mountain on the left. (One of the limitations of any long zoom and most Point and Shoot sensors.) Still… got to try.
The result took a lot of work in post. Ligthtroom dealt with the CA and PF fairly well, and I could bring up the foreground with Fill Light and curve adjustments, but I had a large area of over saturated sky that I did not like. I exported the file as a Photoshop document and opened it in Photoshop Elements 7.0 (simple as choosing Edit in External Program from the Picture menu). There I used the clone stamp, set at 10% transparency, to paint some clouds over the burned out section of the sky. I don’t like to do this, but needs must. I will very likely never get back to Glencoe again. I saved the file, again, as a Photoshop document to preserve all the detail, and finished editing in Lightroom, adding some Clarity and Vibrance and using the Sharpen Landscape preset, pulling up the luminance of the purples and greens a bit in the HSL panel.
The final image is a close approximation of what I really saw, and what I wanted to capture in the fleeting moments I had there. Best I could do.
It is shots like this that make me think long and hard about whether I should be carrying a DSLR on these trips. ???
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F4.0 @ 1/125 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
From the Scotland gallery.
3/01/2009
Waiting for the Hebrides Ferry
Click the image for a larger gallery view on Smugmug.
I am working on more brooding Scottish landscapes but just to lighten things up, here is a snapshot taken while waiting for the ferry from Skye to Uist (in the Hebrides).
It is just a moment caught. The unstudied pose, the natural setting, the young man so caught up in his music as to be unaware of the public nature of his exposure. I zoomed in and then cropped the image slightly for better composition.
Sony DSC H50 at about 110mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/320 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
From Scotland.
2/28/2009
Scots Weather along the A82
One of the hardest things to photograph is weather. Atmospheric effects. Fog. You see things with the eye in weather that you just can’t capture in an image.
But you can try.
This valley along the A82 in the Highlands somewhere between Glasgow and Skye was filled with the coming storm, or passing storm on that day, and I was after the veiling effect of the cloud against the mountains on the far side, and that little bit of sun (almost…well at least a lightening in the atmosphere) creeping up the valley ahead of the cloud.
With a shot like this, you do your best in camera but you know that most of the work will be done in post. I counted on the Recovery slider in Lightroom to let me pull detail from the veiling cloud and shot on Programed Auto. As it was, the image required both Recovery, and some fill light, as well as a bit of adjustment of the curve at the high end to balance the light for this effect. I also moved the black point slightly to the right to add intensity. Some Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel, and a touch of added saturation for the yellows in the HSL panel. Landscape sharpen preset.
I also applied a slight crop at the left and top…left to eliminate a bit of road and two cars, and then top to balance the composition. This had the advantage of shifting the little grove of trees in the mid-ground off center, which I like.
With all that I got close to what I was after. Close enough. With weather, that is about as close as you get. If I stand back from the memory and just look at the image, I like it!
From Scotland.
PS.
After some comments, especially concerning hot white area at the upper left (fully saturated) I decided to take another crack at post-processing this image in LightZone. If you don’t know LightZone, it is wonderful tone mapping program, with some very unique features and abilities, not to mention a powerful set of styles: presets which make major effects possible in a single click of the mouse. Though it is designed, like Lightroom for that matter, to work primarily with RAW files, it does wonders for jpegs, if there is enough data in the file. In addition to dealing very effectively with a wide range of light values, it provides local contrast enhancement which can bring out a startling amount of detail in a landscape, pumping up the molding or modeling of even small details until they look much more 3 dimensional.
Take a look at the image below and compare it to the Lightroom version above. In a single click of the “relight” button, LightZone shifted the tone values to bring the burned out white area in the upper left back, but there was evidently enough information even in the burn to provide shading, so that the area was not filled with solid gray. The light now flows naturally from dense cloud cover in the right to misty cloud on the left. I used LightZones sharpen and color tools (adding some luminance and saturation), and finally applied a second relight to pull up shadow values and deepen the molding of details. The result is impressive. Not necessarily more true to life, but certainly striking.
LightZone Version
For a larger view, click the image.
S. Ingraham
2/27/2009
Sheep's Bit
Taken at my feet right after the shot from yesterday. I was standing in wildflowers (another reason I was not eager to move around much). This is Sheep Bit, which we saw all through the Highlands, and on the Hebrides.
The H50, with its tip-out, articulated LCD panel, allows for extreme low shots, and the 2 cm close focus makes for interesting macros. With shots like this, you have to pay attention to what is in the background. I have a wider shot of the same flower which I like, but I will have to go back and edit out some tallish weed behind the flower, breaking the skyline, to be completely happy with it. This works for me. The fence pulls the eye a bit, but the flower is a strong subject, and placed right at the upper left powerpoint of the image, so that it holds focus. I find the bokeh interesting as well, with what amounts to a swirl of pink clover caused by the shape of the hill.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent), at about closest focus (2 cm from the flower). F4.0 @ 1/250 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I used the Recovery slider to put some drama back into the sky, and some Fill Light to pick up the purples in the flower. I moved the black point to the right to add intensity, and used both Clarity and Vibrance in the Presence panel. Landscape sharpen preset.
From Scotland.