Reality

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There has a been a whole bunch of discussion as of late regarding what is photography, specifically in regard to processing or photo manipulation – you just need to search AIPPA and the name of a famous australian landscape photographer to get the gist of whats going on.

Its been great to see these discussions and also get a insight into what people think, not to see what side people are on, if thats even possible since to have sides there must be a line, but more to understand what is the drive behind them when they generate images.

It has also been interesting from a introspective view trying to understand what I enjoy about photography and drives me to continue doing it, for me its the process of being out there and taking the image and also the interpretation of that image through the processing, from a long exposure, to panoramic to a… dare I say it.. tiny planet or whatever, whatever I can come up with 🙂 the final result, the finished image which gets dumped on social media, is but a mere 5% of the whole process and reason. That said its awesome for a having a timeline and collection of images since I could not organise or find any image on my hard drive beyond a few months 😉

so here we have a picture from Geiranger, Norway, its a wide angle panorama, using 4 frames to get the wide angle, each frame was bracketed to give 3 images, (one over exposed, one normally exposed and one under exposed) these were then automatically aligned and then manually blended (to preserve the bright areas and keep the dark areas) – is it reality? dunno, what if the mountains were tweaked to make them bigger ? everyone has a line when it comes to photography and art, simply because it might not be the same as your line does not make it right or wrong, just different – and just like opinions, this is just one 🙂

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8
Shutter Speed: 0.8s, 1/5s and 3s
ISO: 100

Little Bay

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The conditions on this particular morning were quite interesting and photogenic, the sun really held out for ages and consequently i ended up with 14 million images from the morning… i did only edit a couple so I reckon this folder deserves alittle more love 🙂

I quite like this one – similar to a previous one, however just two shots stitched into a panorama, the second shot really only accounts for about 1/5th of the total image, however it is on the right hand side and gives the sun and its rays a bit of room to breathe.

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 f/4@ 16mm Aperture: f18
Shutter Speed: 1.6s
ISO: 100
Out Front: Lee Graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

Glennfinnan House

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When you say Glennfinnan Scotland, most will associate this place with the Monument and the Harry Potter bridge / viaduct – both items which I did not take a picture of 🙂 hence why I probably have a picture of the house instead. That and you had to pay to go and look at the monument up close, not that am opposed to paying, just that when you are only stopping for 5 minutes it does not make sense.

Anyways, a short walk up the hill to look out over the loch and gain a viewpoint of the Harry Potter viaduct and monument and I noticed this cool scene unfold as a cloud of rain came through, no surprise for Scotland 🙂 and I got wet ..

3 shot panorama (landscape orientation) – really should have gotten that shutter speed a bit high here
D750 coupled with Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 @ 150mm Aperture: f4 Shutter Speed: 1/100s
ISO: 200
Out front: house and loch

Braemer Woods

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Just outside of a little town called Braemer in Scotland there is the Braemer Castle and just near that are some very cool woods, this is kinda in the spot between the two feuding families one of which held the Braemer Castle. I did not need too much imagination to conjure images of Robin hood style bands of dudes lurking thru this area a few centuries ago.

But what was so cool was the luminous green ground cover which contrasted with the start grey of the pines, I did kinda mess this up, it was raining and quite dark, i focused on the trees in front and was using quite a wide aperture and consequently alot in the background was pretty soft and out of focus,to make things worse one frame (its a pretty wide pano using vertical orientation shots) a few shots focused in the background meaning there is some funky layering in there 🙂

13 shot panorama (vertical orientation)
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm Aperture: f8 Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 500
Out front: crazy woods

Tree Life

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Showing some appreciation to the Morton Bay Fig trees, this is what kids are meant to do 🙂 bare foot and swing in the trees 🙂 This tree must be over a hundred years old and has such cool horizontal branches that just cry out to be lounged on 🙂 It also has some really cool hidey holes between the folds of the trunk too…

The endless fuzzy

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So apparently, the thing at the end of the jetty is a place where you can go for a swim, kinda makes sense since the water seems like its knee deep for a long way out, not to mention the water is not that nice close to the shore – this particular scene reminds me of some scape conjured up by fantasy novel where you can punch on thru to the other side a rift or something, in any case it does fill me with some level of calm when looking at it 🙂

4 shot panorama, each shot in the landscape orientation
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 4s
ISO: 100
out front: Lee Graduated Filter (0.6x)

Steeple Peas

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just a little field of freshy picked peas next to one of the many churches dotting the landscape in Sweden. It was the only time I drove on the wrong side of the road 🙂 which is the right side of the road really…

Lady slipper orchids

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are orchids in the subfamily Cypripedioideae, which comprises the genera Cypripedium, Mexipedium, Paphiopedilum, Phragmipedium and Selenipedium

Its like going to the quack and getting them to explain all the freaking weird words they use.. flora is a bit like this, I am sure the names make sense to some.. but to me its gobbly-gok.. man I have wanted to use that phrase for yonks 🙂

So reading my ultrasound report on my busted ankle there is a line
there is subcutaneous oedema at the ankle
so I said to my doc, wtf man ?
to which he said swelling under the fat layer dude
and my response was why do they just not write swelling under the fat layer so your average pleb has half a chance of understanding it 🙂
he just smiled at me 🙂
…. just you wait until you come into my engineering world bro 🙂

anyways, here is a nice picture of a slipper orchid, focus stacked from a whole bunch of image on a pano rail thingy 🙂

Castle Location Checklist

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Scotland

To be fair this not really a castle, more of a hunting lodge or weekender 🙂

– water source, check.
– local forest for timber, check.
– rolling hills, check.
– meandering driveway, check.

When passing places like this (on the road to Braemer) I often wondered how different the scene would have looked 300 years ago, probably in this case, not all that different, a few different trees and more or less vegetation on the hills but i reckon its not changed much…

We had just punched out a pretty big drive (for scotland anyway) and the troops were getting pretty restless with any suggestion of me stopping the van for anything other than a toilet break 🙂 however as we came across the crest of a hill there was no way I was leaving this spot untouched by my camera

Guinness makes you Jolly

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So we stopped at this little 'ol place called Dornie, there is a rather large old castle there, but the more important thing was that we went to the local pub for lunch where I learnt two things..

1) fish and chups is not really like our fish and chips back home and they seem to have an aversion to using sauce bottles and hence have micro sized sauce satchels instead.. thats all well and good, but you gotta use 219 of them to actually get any useful amount of source out, this did have a positive outcome tho.. kinda.. it meant the crazy kids could only eat so much sauce.. they were limited to how fast they could open these wee satchels… hence tickles aka 'would you like a chip with your sauce' went a bit hungry and frustrated 🙂

2) I should really down multiple Guinness before heading off to work – so I am there ordering myself and the girls a real manly round of apple juice and diet coke when at the end of the bar I notice.. well it was a bit hard not to notice, a local scottish gentleman (and I mean that in the true sense) at the end of the bar with a pint of Guinness in his hand. Now that in it sense may not seem strange, however he was decked out in a full kilt and knocking this beer back at a pretty impressive rate, the barperson (note i use the non sex biased version 😉 ) had just finished topping up the second pint and placed it in front of him, at which I thought 'sh$t.. respect to these dudes in scotland' and headed back to my table with my manly apple juice and diet coke 🙂

After lunch and leaving a pile of sauce satchels 3 kms high we went and visited this castle, stuffed if I can remember the name of it.. Eleanor i think .. and during the visit in the Grand Trophy room who should be there! the dude from the pub.. and I'll tell ya what, he was pretty darn jolly and gave us a great little tour of the spot.. so good onya mate and onto the moral of the ramblings… drink Guinness before doing anything to ensure jolliness 🙂