1st PRESENTATION
By Dynamic Scotland Photography
Thursday, 1st, April, 2021.
This is a small presentation I was invited to give for a group of local students of some Landscape/Nightscape photos I've taken over the past few years, I hope both they and yourself enjoy them and can take something away from any of these images and if there's any questions that you would like to ask regarding any of the images please don't hesitate to get in touch.
Bliss - This is a 24 shot (-/+ 3 stop) Bracketed panorama. it consists of 12 shots in (4 x3 Brackets) for the sky and 12 shot in (4 x3 Brackets) for the ground creating a -/+ Bracket of 3 stops. The base exposures were (3s, ISO100, 15mm @ f/11)
For anyone unfamiliar with 'Bracketing' the process is just to create an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image so as to capture as much detail in the highlights as well as some of the detail in the shadows. this is more evident during sunrise/sunset shots when the highlights in the sky are really harsh. And if you expose your shot for those highlights the rest of the image tends to be in silhouette. so, by bracketing you can capture more detail in both the highlights and the shadows of the image.
As of writing up this presentation the above shot of Portencross is the latest photo that I've taken, taken last Monday night (01/03/2021). The photo is of Portencross Castle and Pier, North Ayrshire take just after the sun dropped behind the Isle of Arran lighting up the evening sky in amazing purple, pink, red and orange colours. it was an incredible sunset. and the young couple at the end of the pier enjoying this incredible sunset really set the tone for this shot for me. nights like that are what make landscape photography worthwhile for me.
These next four photos were all taken in the same morning on an amazing sunrise at the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye.
The sunrise was anticipated but still somehow came to be unexpected. the walk up to this part of the Storr from the main carpark takes around 45 minutes depending on your fitness levels or weight of camera equipment you choose you carry along with you, for me if camping overnight my pack can weigh approx. 20-25kg (3-4st)
Anyway! the walk up is around 45 minutes or so and if you want to be up in plenty of time to catch a sunrise you have to set off while it's still dark or just starting to get light. this particular morning when I set off there was just a small crack in the cloud cover to the east where I knew the sun would rise, so I set off with the anticipation of a possible sunrise, but the further up I got the more the cloud rolled in and by the time I reached the summit of the viewpoint the snow started falling leaving me in the middle of a white out and near blizzard conditions. Gusting winds, thick snow, zero visibility... pretty much the exact opposite to what you would want for landscape photography. but I persevered and stuck it out till after the time I knew the sun would be over the horizon before heading back down, just in the off chance that the situation would change... And change it did. completely out of the blue the wind levelled out, the snow stopped, and the cloud began to clear again giving us that incredible anticipated but unexpected sunrise. So, it just goes to show that perseverance and patience can really pay off sometimes.
Iced Storr - 1/6s, ISO100, 80mm @f/16 - Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye
Wayward - 1/40s, ISO100, 24mm @ f/11 - Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye
Again, another bracketed shot this time 5 exposure bracket (2 stops under exposed and 2 stops over exposed) as when exposing for the harsh highlights in the sky the peaks were in almost total darkness, fully in silhouette. bracketing just helped me not to clip the highlights too much and also retain some of the shadow detail in the peaks.
The Pinnacles - 30 shot bracketed panorama, consisting of a one line 6 x 5 Bracketed shots giving a dynamic range bracket of -/+ 5 stops. The base exposure for this was 1/160s, ISO100, 26mm @ f/11 - Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye
'The Ghost Swan', this was a case of being almost ready to take the shot but not quite. I see the swan coming and got set up in time to capture but not quick enough to get the settings dialled in, but I took the shot anyway and really liked the ghostly apparition of the swan in the shot so decided not to delete this one. the shot itself was taken just at the beginning of the day just as the light was starting to break, known as the blue hour (the hour just before or after the golden hour of sunrise and sunset) an hour or so in the day where everything seems to have a ghostly blue or purple colour cast. I think of it as natures colour grading.
Ghost Swan - 1/13s, ISO100, 85mm @ f/8 - Knapps Loch, Inverclyde
This next shot is a work in progress, not because it's an unfinished image but because it's not how I wanted it to be, let me clarify! I took this exact same shot a year previously but it was a bit noisy (full of grain) The heavy grain and loss of detail in the shot came about from having to do a 20m exposure just to get any detail in the mountains. when I got there it was an inky black night and no light what so ever, not even any local light pollution to work off so even with a high ISO of 4000 at f2.8 I still had to go as far as 20 minutes just so I could capture some detail in the shot, so I felt I could have maybe done better with it so I tried again the next chance I got which was almost a year later, so I arrived a little bit earlier in the night when there was some residual light in the night sky just before complete darkness but the sky was not what I wanted, it didn’t have a lot going on in terms of astronomical targets (although you can see the andromeda galaxy just up and to the right of centre in the sky). So, I plan to shoot this shot again hopefully around mid-January when Orion is directly above the mountains around the 15th when there's no moon in the night sky. and hopefully it's third time’s a charm!
Second Chances - 30s, ISO200, 15mm @ f/4 - Fairy Pools, Isle of Skye
‘Cuillin Calm’ - 62s, ISO400, 15mm @f/7.1 - Elgol Beach, Isle of Skye
This shot was taken on the last morning of one of my trips to the Isle of Skye and it was a pretty bland sunrise that morning, not a lot of colour or cloud in the sky so I thought I'd settle down on the rocks and just get in a few long exposure shots before heading back home. I've added this shot into this presentation as it utilises three different techniques that may be of interest when shooting a frame that consists of a foreground that's really close and a background that's really far away with not a lot going on in the middle. (1). by getting low down and close to the rocks you can minimize the empty space of the sea between the rocks and the mountains in the distance and bringing your foreground and background closer together in the frame. (2). by tilting the wide angle lens till the mountains fill up the top of the frame you can use the lens distortion to stretch out the mountains to give them a more imposing roll in the frame, rather than just being small mountains away in the distance which you would get if you were to centre the mountains in the centre of the frame with a wide angle lens. (3). Focus Stack - The rocks were really close in this shot so when I focused on the rocks the background would be out of focus, and when I focused on the background the rocks would be out of focus. so when maxing out your depth of field with upping your aperture is still not enough to get everything in focus you can take a focused shot of the foreground and a focused shot of the background and blend them using 'Auto Blend - Stack Images' in Photoshop and focus blend or (Focus Stack) them into a single image that's sharp from front to back.
Billion Star Icon - 5 x 15s, ISO4000, 24mm @ f/3.5 (stacked for the sky) and 2m, ISO800, 24mm @f/3.5 (for the foreground) - Bauchaille Etive Mor, Rannoch Moor/Glen Etive
This is one of those shots where I always feel kind of awkward with. It’s a composite with two shots from the same location, shooting in the same direction, with the same exposure (NOT same settings, but same exposure) taken almost exactly one year to the day apart. But the reason I’ve added this image in was it’s a good example of an atmospheric condition that works great for astro photography called ‘Akira Fujii effect’ named after a noted Japanese Astrophotographer. The ‘Akira Fujii Effect’ or just ‘Fujii Effect’ is when the atmospheric conditions….. (basically when it’s lightly misty or hazy) the mist creates a condition that allows the brighter stars in the sky to be more pronounced and makes them glow bigger and brighter in your shot, it’s perfect for capturing constellation shots of the night sky. If you’re familiar with the well-known astro photographer You-Tubber Alyn Wallace you might have heard him mention over the last year his new ‘StarGlow filter’ he just developed with Kase filters UK and is currently available for sale. This StarGlow filter replicates this effect, so you don’t have to wait around for the optimal condition that might only come around once or twice a year, you can use the filter and create the effect at will.
Northern Lighthouse - 3s, ISO1250, 50mm @ f2.8 -Turnberry Lighthouse, South Ayrshire
It’s always good to keep a mental note of places you would like to come back to during different occasions. It would be better to write them down for future reference if I’m honest, but I always forget to do that or I’m just too lazy to get the notepad out and write them down sometimes. But this shot is a prime example of why it’s good practice to keep notes of places to revisit. I was out a walk along here one afternoon and thought to myself! “this spot has a good clear view to the north! I wonder if it would be worth coming back one night when there’s a prediction for the northern lights?” so around 6 months later I was in the area and got a ping on my aurora app ‘AuroraWatch-UK’ so thought I’d head down to the lighthouse and see what I can get. And low an behold I got lucky with a short spell of aurora over the lighthouse. (shameless plug alert!)… you can see the time-lapse video from this night if you visit my Facebook page (Link Below).
https://www.facebook.com/dynamicscotlandphotography
Into the Woods - 1/10s, ISO100, 85mm @ f/8 – Eglinton Park, North Ayrshire
This is not going to come as any surprise I don’t think, but I post process my photos! Lol. I shoot in RAW and I process my images the way I see them rather than letting the camera process them how the camera sees them. What I get from the camera with my RAW image’s is dull, flat and for the most part more bland than the scene that was in front of me at the time. But I always shoot in RAW with a flat picture profile as I know I’m going to post process my images as that’s just what I like to do, some people prefer to get it perfect in camera and in a lot of cases these people are very skilled, more skilled than I’ll ever be if I’m totally honest. As getting it right in camera is possibly the number one fundamental in good photography as even when you process your images it’s always best to have a great base image to work from. So always aim to get it perfect in camera.
Anyway! Another good practice to get into is to imagine how you want the photo to look when taking it, I knew I wanted to create a bit of light at the path which I added a bit of a glow using the radial filter in lightroom and a bit of colour grading, dodge and burn and split toning in photoshop to create this shot as I seen it in my head. As you can see from the before and after shots down below, they’re a wee bit different from start to finish. But by shooting flat RAW images and them post processing I made the shot my own.
Before and After shot from a recent walk with the dogs through Eglinton Park, Kilwinning.
Twilight Zone - 20s, ISO1600, 15mm @ f/2.4 – Glen Etive Waterfall, Glen Etive
Twilight is a fantastic time to do astro landscape photography, it's that time of night where it’s almost fully dark, you can almost but not quite just about still see your hand in front of you without a head torch, the light in the sky is just a faint glow on the horizon and the stars are all just starting to show is (in my opinion) one of the most overlooked times to get the camera out to get some night landscape shots. It’s at a time when most landscape photographers have packed up and gone home and most astro photographers have not come out and set up yet, a time where you more often than not have the place to yourself and where you can get some nice night time landscape shots without the need for a big moon or incredibly long exposures. Next time you find yourself at a spot at the end of the day give it that extra hour after sunset and see if you can’t get something different, a shot that no one else has got of that area, an area you may have seen a million photos of but never quite seen it like you will in the twilight zone. lol.
2021 Calendar by Dynamic Scotland Photography.
For all 2020 wasn’t really a productive year I manged to pull a calendar together to put out for the year from a couple of outings I had at the beginning of 2020 and one or two during the summer between the lockdowns. I honestly wasn’t going to bother this year given the circumstances but I got a message from Scots Magazine to ask if I’d participate in their 2021 calendar so after saying yes to them and milling it over I decided to put one together myself and the above collection of photos are the images I went with.
This next lot of images are just a small collection of some of the images I've had published over the last 2 years or so, and as you might see they're not for the purpose of being a brag, more just to let you see that even a snapshot or even just an impromptu photo can gain some traction and get published if there is a story that goes with the shot. a human connection that someone may be able to relate to and not specifically because it's a great shot.
The first set of photos I ever got published and possibly the biggest publication I’ve ever had I don’t even have the original photos anymore, it was an 8 page feature spread in one of Scotland’s longest running lifestyle magazines that’s been running for something like 120 years, the magazine is called Scottish Field and my face was on the front cover next to Alan Titchmarsh the famous horticulturist and tv presenter, and here was me thinking the photos were that bad that I never even kept them, so it just goes to show you that no matter what you’re opinions are on your own work, share them with the world! And let others appreciate your work and the effort you put into your craft.
I’ve started archiving my photos now but for a while I just uploaded them onto my social media pages then deleted them. Not a great idea if you can avoid doing so.
Rannoch Moor Fogbow - 5 x 1/320s, ISO100, 24mm @f/9- Loch Baa, Rannoch Moor (5 shot pano)
This shot was one of three that got picked up and published and quite a few national newspapers, papers like the Mirror, London Economic, Press And Journal, and Herald Scotland being just a few of maybe about 10 or so national papers and sites and was the first time I actually made any money from a publication of any of my photos which gave me a wee bit of a buzz if I’m honest.
Homeward Bound - 149s, ISO800, 200mm @ f/11 – Ardrossan and Arran, North Ayrshire
This shot was published in a couple of national newspapers just a couple of months ago and to be honest I think it was more just for the novelty of the story behind me getting the shot than it was for the shot itself. Basically I was out walking my dogs as I do most nights and I noticed the moon had lit up the snow on the Arran hills behind the top end of Ardrossan, so I ran back to the car to grab my camera but never had a tripod with me so I took off my hat, folded it on a nearby bridge to angle and stabilize the camera to get a long exposure shot, and that’s it! But the story behind the shot and me using the hat was what peaked someone’s interest in the story and that’s what got it published (ITV News even called me “a quick thinking photographer”! a surprising and grateful bonus as I'm clearly not, Lol). So sometimes it’s good to add in just a wee bit of info or a wee story with your photos just to give it that connection for your audience, sometimes people want to hear the backstory of how you got the shot.
The Mountaineer - 1/4000s, ISO200, 200mm @ f/2.8 – Climber on Bauchaille Etive Mor
This one was a complete accident of a shot but again the story rather than the shot made the publication possible.
As most photographers probably do I fling all my photos onto Lightroom when I get in, I scroll through them, do some global exposure adjustments, and then star or flag then as keepers before moving onto fine adjustments. and as you do I zoom into the shot at 100% or so just to check sharpness but when I clicked on this one, I notices a person wearing red trousers and blue jacket climbing the mountain
Zoomed in crop of the climber
So I thought I’d reach out on one of the hill walking groups on Facebook that I was on just to see if anybody happened to be climbing that part of the mountain at that time that afternoon so I could send them a copy of the shot and low and behold I got a reply from a mountain guide, and owner of West Coast Mountain Guides who sent me a photo back taken at around the same time.
Photo taken by the climber looking down from ‘Crowberry Ridge’ climbing route on the North East face of Bauchaille Etive Mor at around the same time my shot was taken. (I was standing down by the river in that shot, not even as much as a pixel in the photo)
So anyway, this back and forth conversation on the Facebook page got picked up by someone at a news desk and they asked if they could interview both of us to run the story the following day. So yet again the story is sometimes just as important as the photo and this can lead to sales or publication so it’s good to make your work public because sometimes there’s a public interest story there that you might not have seen at first.
Three Astro shots that were published nationally and internationally in the world press.
These next three were widely published photos, the first one of the milky way core over Dunure Castle, South Ayrshire was picked up by the Fox News Network and their social media sites and got around 750,000 hits (likes, comments and shares) and gave my Facebook page almost 1,000 new followers in just that few days so sometimes you can just get lucky and that helps push your social media presence a bit further along. I don’t put too much stock in my social media numbers really but in a business sense, the larger your social media presence the larger your potential customer base is. So, it can be important when getting a business off the ground. (which I do hope to do myself one day)
Dunure Core - 4 x 178s, ISO 4000, 24mm @ f/3.5 (tracked and stacked for the sky), and 299s, ISO800, 24mm @ f/3.5 (foreground blended with the sky)
The Long Wait - 99 x (+/- 3 stop) Bracketed panorama. it consists of 33 shots in (33x3 Brackets) for the foreground and (1/500s, ISO800, 15mm @ f/3.5) and 4 x 3m exposures tracked stacked for the sky.
This shot was published but not extensively so, but one or two national and some international newspapers as far afield as Australia did publish it. it's what I consider an extreme pano shot as it consists of nearly 100 bracketed photos just for the foreground alone and if I had done the full 360 degree pano of the night sky too it would have ended up around 160 photos in total. there's a lot going on in this shot so once I get the chance to get back to Skye to try this one again under better conditions I may do a tutorial on how I planned, prepared for, shot and processed this image. so keep an eye out on the page if that is something you think may interest you.
Glen Snoe - 8 shot pano consisting of (4 x 332s, ISO500, 15mm @ f/2.5( for the foreground and (4 x 30s, ISO4000, 15mm @ f/2.5)
For all the foreground and the sky sections of this pano are at different settings they are the exact same exposure value. more details are available on a link on my Facebook page or by visiting my Wordpress Blog main page. the reason for different settings is more down to star trail.
https://wordpress.com/view/dynamicscotlandphotography.wordpress.com
If 30 seconds is not enough exposure time to get a good sharp image of the night sky you also have the option of using a star tracker. However! One thing you first notice when you start to use a star tracker is that you get the opposite problem to star trail in your shots when doing long exposure. Because you’re tracking the stars you end up getting ground trail where the ground is all blurry, but the stars are nice and sharp. So, you must blend (or composite) the sky and the foreground frames together in post.
So (just in-case anyone is unsure) when someone says a shot is “tracked, stacked and blended” it means they took several tracked star shots and stacked them on top of each other, stacking them together and blended them with a stationary foreground shot to make one complete image. (stacking is for obtaining better noise reduction in your sky shots as it eliminates a lot of the noise signal in created due to a high ISO)
Anyway! You’ll be glad to hear that that’s everything for now, but thank you all so much for taking the time to read about some of my photos and I hope more than anything else that they gave someone some inspiration to get out and enjoy the Scottish landscapes and nightscapes as much as I do. And with any luck I’ll see one or two of you out and about on the hills.
Many Thanks once again!
Sylvan
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