Winter is coming - Landscape photography
Ok, I admit it! I may have done a tiny bit of photoshop to the first image here. And by a tiny bit of photoshop; I mean a lot of photoshop. Truth is I have been out 2 times trying to get something half as good as this. It didn't happen, the image below is the best I could do in camera. It will come, it has just been bad luck/timing. On the supermoon eclipse I drove all over Skye and had a perfect shot lined up in front of the Black Cuillin just beyond Torrin. There I was standing amongst the seaweed. The Moon was swinging round into a perfect position just flanking the southern peaks. The cloud was all over the shop but at that moment the Moon was clear of it, and it looked like it would stay that way. But in true West of Scotland style, within five minutes of me getting excited a sphere of cloud formed from nothing beneath the moon, swelled up and joined the cloud which had been whirling off the peaks. Jeez O! I was miffed. The cloud didn't break for the rest of the night and I headed to my bed despondent. Second time I traipsed to the the top of An Aird - Inverness - in the hope of catching the northern lights and although the milky way was clear and vivid the aurora borealis never showed itself. Pffffffft! Any how I will persevere with this photography in the dark thing. It's fun and I'm getting the hang of it.Anyway despite my failures I'm still find myself drawn to the close-up detail, often landscape photography leaves me cold. Much as I love a grand vista it's the details right by your face that compel me. The very edge of a waterfall, fighting grass spiders, the eye of a Pollock or indeed a Bonxie run over on the road. The galaxy is amazing, enormous and difficult to comprehend but a dead Bonxie is very comprehensible. It's to our scale if you see what I mean? Scale is important not only in photography but life in general; philosophically. Look at all the stars in the milky way photos, they are gigantic and in the past. Light years away in the hostile, impossible vacuum of space. Stars are bigger than us, we are bigger than Bonxies, Bonxies are bigger than spiders! Know your size and act accordingly. HAAAA! But seriously whats the more compelling image here, the fake 'razzle ma dazzle' of the Red Cuilins in a meteor shower. Or the carcass of a once noble pirate of the Sky.