Up, not far from the coast, in northeastern Scotland, this is Carrol Rock. Normally you’d be able to see right out to sea from this vantage point, but it was a day filled with passing storms, so instead you can see one of those in the distance, as the sun burst through in the foreground.
If you’ve missed it, Adobe has now brought “real” HDR to image processing, taking it past the tone-mapping that we’re all used to. (Think of this version of HDR more like the HDR you see when watching content on Netflix/Prime, etc where you need a HDR display to properly see it.) Check out their blog entry explaining it all over here.
See that little island over on the left of this image in the middle of the loch, it’s the location of a grave. Something I noticed when flying my quadcopter around the area. It made me wonder… do you get put there because you’re loved, or because you’re so feared that people don’t want you anywhere near them. Trapping your spirit there where it can’t escape and cause havoc. Maybe it’s either…
While the majority of my time in Scotland was filled with amazing weather… sometimes too hot with few clouds, there was the occasional glimpse of the traditional Scottish summer. Such as on this hike where we got a good soaking as the storm rolled in from the right. It was rather welcome.
Ok, so technically this is a river, but it was the middle of a heatwave, and the water was quite low. Either way my feet felt very much in need of some light relief, so off with the socks and shoes it was before I took a little paddle in the lovely cool, clear water. So soothing. Also, see the bridge just around the bend, that’s a foot bridge, beneath it is something you rarely find nowadays, a ford for wheel-based traffic to cross through the water. I thought it might be a good idea to wander in there and it WAS NOT. The stones were soooo smooth, like ice, which made for quite a treacherous few moments as I tried to retrace my steps.
Just a nice peaceful chunk of Scottish landscape on a lovely summers day…
For those of you who missed the newsletter the other day, here’s the portion on how I configured my bags/gear for Scotland and the USA…
I’m still sticking with the Sony A7R series for my main camera body. Primarily with the 24-105 G which is just so amazingly flexible and all I really carry each day. When I need a quickfire shot, my Pixel 7 Pro does the job really well and up in the air I’ve moved on from the Mavic Pro series to a mix of Mavic Air 2S with its 1-inch sensor and the latest DJI Mini which is so small and light but creates great pano images. Small/light is the way to go drone wise.
My system for getting these, and all my other stuff, about revolves around 2 Peak Design Travel Backpacks. I wear them both at the same time, with one holding all my clothes and boring stuff on my back and one with all my gear and cool stuff on my front like some sort of mutant turtle. Oh, that reminds me… my current Tripod is the Peak Design Travel Tripod in Carbon Fiber. Super lightweight/compact and easy to get around.
Stu had a similar sort of system going on… just a bit more loosely packed as Scotland is home to him, so he didn’t need to minimise like me for international travel. So bag 1 for Stu… Travel Backpack (all sorts of random camera stuff we might need, like chargers, extra lenses and the like). Configured with their various packing cubes. Bag 2 was an Everyday Backpack for clothes and bag 3 the same but containing core photography gear, including an Everyday Sling slid into the top where it fits nicely, containing the drone of the day.
So that, and the Insta360 X3 just about covers it. All of the above items very much recommended and used to create all the images you’ve seen from Scotland.
Here’s an ultra-glamorous behind the scenes shot of me, minus the bags…
So, here’s a continuation of an experiment in its very early stages.
A new type of vlog thing where I take you along, in 360, as I wander the cityscapes and landscapes of the places I visit. These will likely evolve over time, they are experiments for now, so expect a few rough edges and a slower pace than the average YouTube travel vid. I hope you find them interesting… here is Glasgow Attempt #2… and remember you can spin the camera all around any time you want. All feedback appreciated!
Wow… well the last newsletter got a lot of feedback regarding the first batch of Scotland images. So, by popular demand, here is another…
If you missed the newsletter over the weekend (or the post yesterday about it) then you may have missed the recent Luminar news. So here it is… In a past newsletter, I talked a little bit about how my main workflow has moved away from Aurora HDR to Luminar Neo, now that it has HDR functionality available. That has continued to be the case and every image you saw in recent blog posts was processed on Luminar Neo. It’s a great bit of software and it has been interesting to watch it evolve. Most recently Skylum (finally!) added panorama functionality which removes yet another reason to stick with alternate software. You should definitely check it out. 🙂
