View allAll Photos Tagged fifecoastalpath
Today’s image was all about trying to make the best of a compromise. I really wanted to catch both the curve of the shoreline as well as the colour of the sky but I just couldn’t get everything I wanted in frame.
On the night in question the water was millpond smooth, which was in stark contrast to my previous visit in gale force winds, and the shape of the bay was clearly visible on the edge of the sands. The colour reflected in the water was just beautiful and I wanted to make that a feature of the image. However, I was shooting with a super-wide lens to get in the sky and that has the effect of exaggerating perspective. Basically it makes distant objects appear even more distant and that spoiled the nice shape of the waters edge. I had a choice to make; foreground interest and sky but lose the curve of the shoreline or raise the tripod to get better perspective and see more of the curve but lose the impact of the foreground. Well in this image I chose the latter and decided to drop the impact of the rocks under foot. Did I make the correct decision? Well I’m still not convinced I did because the feature I wanted is just too weak to make a difference here and the rocks could have been so much stronger. At least the sky looks great!
Over the past couple of days I have been in Scotland along the Fife Coastal trail and there are some beautiful little harbours in this corner of Scotland. Though I thought Crail was by far the most picturesque of those I saw. Certainly worth a visit if you are ever in the area.
Sorry for the lack of activity here on Flickr but recently I have been puttting a lot of effort into my motorsport feeds on here and also on Instagram. Not everyones cup of tea but a great hobby of mine.
Many thanks for taking the time to view this and other images in my stream. Instagram kev_mac_66
I was standing sheltering from the rain, this is Scotland after all, looking out to sea and watching the boats in the distance. I was struck by the shapes of the rocks, the movement of the tidal flow and the winds pushing the clouds and that they all seemed to line up in horizontal bands. It made me think of the striations in a rock formation, hence the title.
This was captured in a single long exposure frame and processed twice from the raw file to produce a foreground and a background image. I hadn’t realised at the time that the larger boat was moving as much or I’d have captured another normal shot to clone it in. Unfortunately that little screen on the back of the camera isn't always enough to check everything.
A simple beach shot taken about 20 minutes before sunrise. The light was just turning from red to gold and the clouds were about to light up with the first glow of the sun. In that moment the water was calm and pale relecting the golden band on the horizon.
The weather hasn’t been great for a week or so now so it’s been difficult to get any shots. However, I noted that the forecast for the weekend was predicting a good sunset Friday and a good sunrise on Saturday. To make up for lost time when rain cancelled play I decided to take advantage of both opportunities. So there I was out on Friday night loch side catching the red skies glowing away long after sundown and this is a shot on the Fife coast pre-dawn before the sun breaks the next morning. It seemed like a good idea at the time but in reality these two shots were taken about 4 hours apart and I managed to grab a little sleep in the middle. Who ever said the photography was a relaxing pastime?
Today started off with a little adventure and some life threatening danger. Well, actually I’m exaggerating a bit but I was more than a little afraid for my personal safety. Well, actually if I’m honest I was more concerned for my camera kit than my own well-being. But hay, priorities!
I found a possible subject to shoot near my home and I’ve been trying to work out how to get there for a few weeks. The town I’m visiting is Kinghorn on the coast of Fife in Scotland. I’ve been there many times before but recently I spotted an old ruin at the shoreline. I noticed that when the tide is high this old structure protrudes from the water and could make for a really interesting shape to shoot on a long exposure. So naturally I’m interested and set about finding out how to get there.
Now I should have been curious as to why no other local photographers have been there first. I have not seen a single shot of the ruin on Flickr and I’ve scanned everything there is from my local area looking for ideas. There-in lays the story.
I use Flickr to get photo ideas. I use tools like Google maps to find locations and access routes. I use tide apps and sun position tools to work out timing. The apps tell me that the weather is good, the sun is at the right angle and the tide will be at its height just before dawn. Perfect! However, none of these on-line facilities tell you that what looks like an easy access path and a couple of little rocks on google earth is actually a dangerous cliff edge, a potentially lethal jump over a gorge and a hair raising clamber across slimy rocks that with one slip leads to a high speed drop off the edge and into the sea. I made my way across all of those harrowing obstacles in the semi light of pre-dawn only to discover that the final gap is just too big. I stand there breathing hard and looking at my goal less than a hundred yards before me but I just can’t make it. Not without climbing gear and given that it’s high tide I could probably use a boat too. Ah well!
After all that today’s post is the shot that I consoled myself with after I made my way back over the obstacle course to another part of the shoreline. It’s a little out of focus and there is some major camera shake going on but can you blame me.
An old jetty that has long since dropped out of use was catching the light from the setting sun. The island in the background, which was also nicely catching the sun, is Inch Keith in the Firth of Forth. East Lothian in the distance was already in the shadow of clouds and dropped nicely out of focus.
A mean and moody monochrome of Lady’s Tower near Elie in Fife. In this image I was going for strong textures in the rocks and sky. I’ve probably pushed the sharpening a little high but I really wanted to stress that grain and create feeling of rough stone.
No drastic photoshopping here. Just a magical sunset, a harbour, lots of bread put down by an old lady, some hungry gulls and hey presto I got a shot I liked. I made a slight tweak to the brightness and contrast, but those colours were real, as were the birds. Have a super evening my dear friends.
This was one of three of my photos used in The Fife Coastal Path publicity brochure for 2009.
The tides moves remarkable fast when you are trying to catch a long exposure.
Here I am at the beach front at Seafield chasing the water as it slowly but surely moves back to reveal the rocks. I prefer to shot an outgoing tide because the rocks are still wet, the weeds look move vibrant and glossy and there is the added benefit that you won’t find yourself trapped because you didn’t pay attention. The downside is that the level of the water drops at quite a remarkable rate and can make catching that ideal level difficult.
To take the shot you see here I needed to pick my way carefully across the high points of the rocks whist surrounded by water until I reached the point of the formation. I set up the tripod, mounted the camera and started to focus and meter. Now I have a routine when I’m doing long exposure HDR composites where I shoot short for the sky, medium for the mid-range and long for the water or foreground. But what happens when you shoot an outgoing tide like this is that by the time you shoot the last exposure the water has gone. So I know what you are thinking ‘Just shoot the other way around, foreground first’. Well yes that’s obvious now but I’m a creature of habit and I ruined a few good shots before I had my ‘Doh’ moment. So let that be my simple little tip for you today. Expose for the most important or most variable part of the image first.
The other good thing about an outgoing tide, I didn’t have to clamber back over the wet rocks to dry land I simply stepped of onto the newly exposed sand. Easy!
An image of the sun caught between the horizon and a bank of cloud among the broken and collapsed sections of the old sea wall at Seafield. This was the shot that I had planned for and was going to this the location to catch. Well, not exactly this shot but the premise was the same.
The forecast said that it would be a clear sunrise and that there would be no wind. Spot on I thought and well worth setting the alarm for three in the morning. I get to site with plenty of time to spare scouted out the spot I wanted to shoot from and estimated as best I could the point on the horizon that the sun would appear. Right, I’m ready! Just be patient and the shot is practically in the bag.
Well I’m not really all that patient at the best of times. There was still quite some time to go and the light was already looking nice so I started scouting around for some other photo opportunities whilst I waited for the main event to kick in. To cut a long story short, and besides I already told the story of my tripod being caught by the rising tide, I set the camera up for a long exposure and forgot to go back to it before the tide came in. What was worst of all was that as I was drying off my feet after recovering my kit from among the waves I saw the sun pop up over the horizon.
My shot! I’m missing my shot! I didn’t drag myself out of bed at 3am to get nothing but wet feet. So picture me hurriedly hobbling across the beach, pebbles not sand I might add (ouch!), one boot on a foot the other left behind. Tripod tucked into crook of one arm, fumbling to get off the wide angle with the other and juggling the zoom that I needed to switch to at the same time. Throw in a couple of ND filters and a lens cap or two you can imagine I was not painting the picture of the consummate professional here. I knew I was already too late but I had to try to salvage something.
In the end I did get a shot. It’s not the shot I planned for but it was ok-ish and I did learn a very valuable lesson.
What is the lesson you ask! It’s got nothing to do with being more patient or paying more attention whilst out shooting, it’s the fact when out shooting long exposures I need to have a second camera body, obviously. ;-)
Caplie Coves or the Caves of Caiplie are formations of eroded sandstone on the coast of East Neuk in Scotland, between the picturesque fishing villages of Anstruther and Crail. They have been used for keeping livestock and for Christian worship in the Middle Ages. In the 1930s a hermit briefly made one of the caves his home, putting up a wall with a door and a window.
Today’s post is an image I have planned on taking for a few years now but somehow never got the timing or the conditions right.
The lighthouse is on the end of the pier at the harbour in Burntisland in Fife and the view in the distance is the Fourth Bridges. From this perspective the sun goes down in the vicinity of the bridges for only a couple of weeks out of the year and if the weather isn’t up to scratch it’s easy to miss it. The shot is not exactly the image I have planned because I forgot one of the key components and that was a speedlight. I needed to use a flash on the longest reach to give a bit of fill to the white body of the lighthouse itself. I did think about aborting again until I had all the ingredients but the sky was so nice tonight I just had to grab what I could.
The nights are drawing in and it’s getting more difficult to get shooting photographs during the day. Here is an example of shooting a landscape subject at night and using the ambient lighting from the local buildings and from the distant town to create a different view of a common subject.
When I first processed this image I really debated with myself as to whether I preferred the colour or the monochrome version. I made up my mind to post the colour version a few weeks back because my Flickr stream had been a little lacking in warmth for a little while but that still didn’t determine my own preference. I’ve come back to this version because it stood out to me and I think it’s worth seeing. If you feel inclined I’d really appreciate some feedback on which version you prefer.
This is another view of Lady’s tower the local landmark on the Fife coast near Elie. My last shot from a few days ago was going for an unusual angle looking upwards from inside the tower. In this case the view is the traditional perspective from the bay to the north of the tower.
I chose this shot because the combination of the brooding and stormy looking clouds out in the Firth of Forth gave a nice contrast to the warm tones of the tower stone and the yellow algae catching the soft light of the evening sunshine. The foreground rocks are of the same material and provide a nice tone to link the parts of the image together.
Inchcolm Island with its old Abbey viewed from Aberdour, on a day when the sea looked like milk!
Inchcolm (from the Scottish Gaelic "Innis Choluim", meaning Columba's Island) is an island in the Firth of Forth in Scotland. Repeatedly attacked by English raiders during the Wars of Scottish Independence, it was fortified during both World Wars to defend nearby Edinburgh. Inchcolm now attracts visitors on short boat trips to see its former Augustinian Abbey and its wildlfe too.