Glen Orrin

Okay,

Writing in the midst of a long weekend. The weather in Scotland has been really annoying, snow showers followed almost immediately by sleet & rain that means that photography opportunities are limited once again.

However, I did manage to get up to Glen Orrin, one of the less talked about and less famous Scottish glens. It's not very accessible and was changed forever by the development of a hydro-electric dam to create Orrin reservoir.

The river Orrin runs past my parents house and must have been a really spectacular river prior to the creation of the dam. On the upside, it's green(ish) power and supplies some really remote homes with electricity.

Anyway...I got a few nice pictures, probably my favorite is this one of an old croft. It was probably abandoned about 80 years ago when the 1st world war decimated the crofting population and modern agricultural practices rapidly reduced the need for manpower on the estates, a very quiet, less vaunted Highland clearance.

There's a few more shots of the river and surrounding glen at the Picasa page. The next fortnight looks set to be awful, a busy work week then another conference in Warwick...then it's nearly Christmas and hopefully I can relax a bit.

Can't believe I've had the camera for almost a year!

Me Myself and I

Me Myself and I, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

A week in Paris, cultural capital and architectural wonder. France has brought us photographers like Nicephore Niepce who arguably invented the medium and Eugene Atget, a pioneering street photographer….surely I’d find something inspiration to take pictures of?

Ah…no. A week outside Paris at my companies training centre near Chantilly.

It was still a beautiful location; you can see some of my pictures on my picasa site. There’s a chateau and parkland and stuff so it was a nice setting for a training course…but photographic opportunities were limited.

It was quite a challenging course that required a lot of soul searching and this got me thinking about how you’d capture ‘soul searching’ in a photo….I’m not sure if I quite got it right, but I had fun taking it and it took my mind of the course for 10 minutes!

Oh yeah, I mentioned paintballing in my last forum post…don’t bother taking your camera it’s too risky! Mine stayed in the case the whole time.

In geeky news, Olympus have announced a new camera, the E-30 which looks very interesting. They’ve also re-released the 14-54mm lens, which seems odd as the original version is fine. Personally I’ll be upgrading my lenses long before I get a new camera body.

I’ve got a few days holiday (my last before Christmas) at the end of this week so hopefully I’ll get out and about with the camera.

Panorama Drama

A great week last week, on Thursday I climbed Cnoc Udais, a hill near my parents village of Muir of Ord. It was bright clear day and the snowy mountains made for some great panoramas and landscapes. I’ve had a really draining couple of weeks, with work stresses, an ill father-in-law and a lot of work related travel….I needed the break and feel a lot better for it.
Anyway, the history of Cnoc Udais is a dark one, the literal translation is the ‘Hill of Judas’, apparently the ‘cnoc’ looks like a pregnant woman (I couldn’t see it) and this is due to a woman being ‘ravished’ on the hill, (not sure who did the ravishing…English-folk probably)…anyway, as she lay down to die on the Cnoc, the hill took her form…changing it’s shape as a memorial to the tragic attack.

Regardless of its origins, the cnoc stands on it’s own in a valley surrounded by mountains, so the view from the top on a clear day is really spectacular. Also it gives some really alpine views for a relatively short walk; so the fantastic view at the top is big return on the small amount of the energy invested in climbing it. It takes about 3 hours for a return trip to the summit so you can be back down the hill in time for lunch…ideal.

There was a great article in last months Digital Photography on panoramas…and standing on the top of the hill seemed like a golden opportunity to try out some of their techniques. Photoshops stitching tools take a long time to process several photos, but the end result is usually flawless. Three of my examples are shown above…I’m really pleased with outcome and hope to get some of these professionally printed. For further Pano-related inspiration, take a look at this excellent flickr group.

I’m also working on a photo-book for a Christmas gift for someone, I’m using Photobox, the interface is excellent, you upload the pictures to the web at full size and use their excellent online tools to create the book. I used myphotobook for a little book for the wedding in August and wasn’t too impressed with the quality…I’ll let you know how this one turns out.

Going Paintballing this weekend so I’m unsure what photo opportunities that will present. The following week I’m staying in France for a conference…I’ll take the camera along but I don’t know what chances I’ll get to snap anything of value.