Judge - Nick Bowman.
An interesting competition to kick off the new season. Nearly everyone not held back recevied 17…! Pretty chuffed to have achieved 1st (HC) and 3rd (HC). Pretty irritated to have set the bar here for the rest of the year…!
Click images for full-size.
The Braes, towards Ben Tianavaig.
Last day on Skye so off we went in search of Hairy Coos. Not a coo to be seen. So we found seals instead. Ten-a-penny they are. Before that though, we went to the Braes:
Then Dunvegan Castle, named after the day they all decided to start eating meat and dairy,
Settlement
Dropped my expensive 100-500 L lens onto the rocks today, bending the mount. “But Jim! You haven’t shot above 35mm all week!” That’s right. But I brought it all the way here to drop it on the rocks at Rhu Falls because I’m exciting and unpredictable.
Rubha nam Brathairean today followed by Quiraing. Pleasantly far less rain and far less wind!
Quiraing
Then on to Neist Point lighthouse before dinner.
We happened to be in Elgol at the right time for the tide to be able to access Spar Cave. Mid-September makes this a relatively busy place despite it’s somewhat treacherous nature. Beautiful flowstone formations in the cave, but the nicest pictures were to be taken outside of the cave.
…Then a quick potter around Portree for more why-am-I-doing-this handheld one-second-plus shutter noodling.
To the Fairy Pools (Glumagan nan Sithichean) with a wide lens and an ND filter like a slab of MDF. It suited the weather - especially the brooding clouds clinging to the summits of Sgurr an Fheadain. True to form, I essentially drove for two days to come here, carried a tripod on my back all the way there, and couldn’t be bothered putting it together for these long exposures or the 20-shot focus-stacking 1/2 second images I decided like a mug to shoot hand-held.
If anybody can explain what happened here, I’d be extremely interested to know. It was just found like this on our bookshelves. (Our soon-to-collapse-due-to-death-watch-beetle bookshelves, potentially.)
Through the bloody window…
48-Hour Challenge 48 Hours Too Late
“This is a fun 'Competition' for the summer break. You will be given 5 topics to take images of, process and upload within the 48 hours.”
Topics: Contrasts, Natural Beauty, From My Shopping Basket, Reflections, Speed.
…and also this:
Cambridge Camera Club set up a photohunt for the summer break: “locate each object [illustrated on the map] and take a photo of it, or from it, or near it – any technique, any subject.”
It’s good to have fairly arbitrary limitations placed on you, but nevertheless it was still really quite difficult, and I leant on the ‘near it’ get-out quite a bit…
I shot this wide, but think it’s far more effective cropped in. Gives me the willies.
