Having a rare weekend off I grabbed my camping gear and headed for the hills. My objective was to pitch my tent on Beinn a’Chrulaiste, a corbett directly across from the iconic Buachaille Etive Mor. When I arrived in Glencoe the weather did not look to promising with some grey and ominous clouds. I did manage to get to the top of the hill before the rain started so I quickly pitched the tent and sought some shelter. 6 hours later once the torrential rain and gales had subsided I did emerge from the tent in the hope for some better conditions for some picture taking. Talk about being in the right place at the right time, the view from the hill was stunning, with a rainbow to the left and a biblical shaft of light falling into the centre of the valley. As I was travelling light I didn’t have my usual DSLR camera equipment with me, only my iphone, Gopro and a drone however the phones panoramic feature did come in handy in order to capture this scene: –

Here are a couple of images taken from the drone (16 image stitch panoramic)

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Now that I own a drone (DJI Mavic Air) it has given my photography a completely new vantage point to explore. Here is a little shot taken of the bridge at Kenmore

Nowadays everyone has a phone with a camera and most of our pictures are taken on them. I have spent 10’s of thousands of pounds on professional camera equipment so I can get the highest quality pictures. Having just returned from a photography trip to Skye I loved the results from the professional camera however I am always also taking picture with my iPhone 7. I love the simplicity of taking pictures and also the built in panoramic feature. Here are a selection of images captured on my phone, I am really impressed with the quality. What do you think?

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I decided to head back up to Glencoe again to try and capture a few more landscape images. This time however the weather was a complete contrast to my last visit. There was high winds, white out snow showers and lashing rain, which did kind of hinder the process of taking any pictures; however I persisted and patiently waited for any window of opportunity in the weather and here are a few of the results.

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The recent wintry weather inspired me to get up at some ungodly hour in the morning and head out to take some pictures. This was a last minute decision meaning I had no idea of where or what I was going to photographer when I left the house. 2 hours and 90 miles later I found myself at the entrance to the spectacular valley of Glencoe. I never tier of the views here and you are always guaranteed a picture no matter what the conditions are like. On this occasion the mountains were covered in a fresh blanket of pristine snow and the sunrise produced some lovely warm tones making for some lovely images. As always the early morning glow of the sun was over all to quickly however the mid morning light still provided some lovely images.

I feel the impressive vista of Glencoe is best suited to a panoramic format and all of my images were taken with this in mind. My preferred method for panoramic images is to capture 3 or 4 overlapping landscape images which I then stitch together using an simple little free application from Microsoft called ICE. Once it has been stitched I then do some final adjustment in Photoshop and here are the end results.

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These days most people have a camera phone. Normally I never bother with mines as I usually have one of my Canon SLR’s camera with me however recently I was on a business trip to Bristol and I had a few hours to kill before my flight home so decided to visit Cheddar Gorge. It was a lovely afternoon so I thought I would take the chance to capture a few images on my phone as it was my only option. This gave me a chance to play with the panoramic feature whereby you hold the phone level while panning to either the right or left and a sequence of images are captured and stitch together into one shot. Due to the height of the gorge cliffs a single panoramic shot could not capture the sheer size so I took 3 shots one to capture the lower cliffs and road, a second to capture the mid section and finally a third shot to capture the cliff tops and some of the sky. I then took these three images and using Microsoft ICE stitched the three images into together, creating this image. I know it is nowhere near the quality of an image I could have gotten if I had my “big” camera with me however it has done way better than I would have ever imagined. So perhaps in the future I may be taking more pictures on my camera phone 🙂

What I forgot to mention was that only minutes before I took this picture I lost my footing and barrelled down the hill into a large patch of hawthorn, brambles and stinging nettles, cutting my hands, arms and back to ribbons. The lengths some people go to in order to get a picture even with a camera phone 🙂

I had the chance to do some walking in Yorkshire recently despite the unseasonally bad weather. The high winds and snow drifting made for some very challenging conditions however a well planned route and an incentive to reach the pubs on time drove us always onwards towards our final destination. Here are a few of the images I took during the full days walking on the Saturday plus a little slide show.

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As I was passing Portencross I thought it would be rude note to stop by and take a few pictures. This time the visibility was better and the snow covered peak on the Isle of Arron of clearly visible. Although the temperature was around 1 degree the stiff North Easterly breeze certainly did make it feel a lot colder, so after taking a few pictures I made a hasty retreat back to the warmth of the car.

The recent cold weather condition have made for some delicate ice sculptures on the shores of Loch Doon. Any bushes or grasses close enough to the waters edge have a complete coating of ice caused by freezing spray from the loch. These make for some interesting pictures.