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This captivating image showcases the enchanting interplay of light and shadow during the golden hour in Los Gatos. The photograph is dominated by a dramatic cloudscape, with billowing cumulus clouds illuminated in warm, golden hues against a serene blue sky. In the foreground, the silhouettes of diverse vegetation create a striking contrast, adding depth and local character to the scene. A lone palm tree stands tall on the left, its fronds clearly defined against the luminous sky. Pine trees and other foliage frame the right side and bottom of the image, their dark outlines emphasizing the radiant backdrop. This stunning juxtaposition of California's iconic palm trees with the cloud-kissed sky captures the unique beauty of Los Gatos' natural landscape, inviting viewers to pause and appreciate the ephemeral magic of sunset in this charming Bay Area town.
A flying bird at the backdrop of dramatic sky. Captured from 3rd floor roof. It was flying quite low.
he castle is situated on the Laich of Moray, a fertile plain that was once the swampy foreshore of Spynie Loch. This was originally a more defensive position than it appears today, long after the loch was drained.
The motte is a huge man-made mound, with steep sides and a wide ditch separating it from the bailey. The whole site is enclosed by a water-filled ditch, which is more a mark of its boundary than it is a serious defensive measure.
Duffus Castle was built by a Flemish man named Freskin, who came to Scotland in the first half of the 1100s. After an uprising by the ‘men of Moray’ against David I in 1130, the king sent Freskin north as a representative of royal authority.
He was given the estate of Duffus, and here he built an earthwork-and-timber castle. Freskin’s son William adopted the title of ‘de Moravia’ – of Moray. By 1200, the family had become the most influential noble family in northern Scotland, giving rise to the earls of Sutherland and Clan Murray.
In about 1270, the castle passed to Sir Reginald Cheyne the Elder, Lord of Inverugie. He probably built the square stone keep on top of the motte, and the curtain wall encircling the bailey. In 1305, the invading King Edward I of England gave him a grant of 200 oaks from the royal forests of Darnaway and Longmorn, which were probably used for the castle’s floors and roofs.
By 1350, the castle had passed to a younger son of the Earl of Sutherland through marriage. It may have been then that the keep was abandoned, possibly because it was beginning to slip down the mound, and a new residence established at the north of the bailey.
Viscount Dundee, leader of the first Jacobite Rising, dined in the castle as a guest of James, Lord Duffus in 1689, prior to his victory against King William II’s government forces at Killiecrankie. Soon after, Lord Duffus moved to the nearby Duffus House. The castle quickly fell into decay.
Pink flowers growing from a tree arc towards the sky in front of decorative eaves and a blue sky. Captured March 2023 in Bremen, Germany in front of Meierei restaurant in Bürgerpark.
Peat laden mountaintops of the West coast, roll down to the Atlantic, Broken rock and bog is all that is here. Yet still, here Ireland shows a beauty in burgundy tones with dapples of sky captured by the hungry ground.
Shot with a 1950's 6x6 Folding Voigtlander Perkeo II and Kodak 100 film. Lab scan.
Duffus Castle, near Elgin, Moray, Scotland, was a motte-and-bailey castle and was in use from c.1140 to 1705. During its occupation it underwent many alterations. The most fundamental was the destruction of the original wooden structure and its replacement with one of stone. At the time of its establishment, it was one of the most secure fortifications in Scotland. At the death of the 2nd Lord Duffus in 1705, the castle had become totally unsuitable as a dwelling and so was abandoned.
The eider is the UK's heaviest duck and its fastest flying. It is a true seaduck, rarely found away from coasts where its dependence on coastal molluscs for food has brought it into conflict with mussel farmers. Eiders are highly gregarious and usually stay close inshore, riding the swell in a sandy bay or strung out in long lines out beyond the breaking waves. It is an Amber List species because of its winter concentrations. These pictured are annual visitors to Burghead harbour, Moray.
So after taking the landscape plunge last summer with the low cost $299 Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens mainly for night sky images, I was really struck how nice the wider view worked for many of the scenes out west. Also enjoyed it recently with the night sky captures in West Virginia.
I did have issues though with the quality of the 14mm lens. While sharp in the center, even at f/8 the corners and edges (about 1/6 of the frame) was not sharp at all. So I have been researching other 14mm primes to upgrade. I was really close to getting the Canon 14mm f/2.8, even had it ordered and shipped, but decided to cancel and research a little more (that Canon lens is not cheap).
I looked closely at the reviews of the Sigma 14mm f/1.8, and found that many felt it was as sharp as the Canon … though slightly less than a true 14mm (more like 14.8mm). Costing nearly half as much as the Canon, and 1.3 stops more of light, I ended up getting the Sigma Lens. I arrived yesterday, and after a long day at work I was still excited to play and test it into the evening for about three hours. Really checked it for sharpness at all aperture settings. The results really blew me away.
At f/8 to f/16, I found no flaws in sharpness anywhere in the frame (sharp to the corners and edges). In fact, the results even at f/4 at the corners was hands down 10 times better than the corners with my Canon 17/40mm lens at f/8 and 17mm.
As you get it down to f/1.8 though, the sharpness in the corners at infinity focus gets pretty bokehed (I think I made that word up). But playing with the live view and focusing minor adjustments, I was able to get a slight modification to the focus point at f/1.8 where the sharpness to the corners was nearly as good as in the center … SO VERY IMPRESSIVE. For night time captures where I will be using it at f/1.8, I think it will be super results.
Thinking this may soon by my staple landscape lens (getting the 150mm filters and adapter ring as well) so I can be as creative with it as I have been with the 17/40. Having both of these landscape lenses will really be nice … the 17/40 will be real handy when in the rain, and also at the beach with ocean spray. Finding a way to keep falling rain off of the open curved 14mm lens will be hard I think … unless I can make an umbrella adapter or get Mrs. Krach to hold an umbrella for me ;)
The image here was taken today while at lunch at work … 101 degrees F Summer Day … really liking the f/16 sun burst / star created with the new lens to. It is really pretty I think.
The Nokia site in Munich – circular, futuristic, focused.
Right on cue: a jet slicing through the sky, captured with the EOS R8 and the RF 24mm f/1.8.
Maryland ...at 100 degrees F. Summer is in full swing now.
So after taking the landscape plunge last summer with the low cost $299 Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens mainly for night sky images, I was really struck how nice the wider view worked for many of the scenes out west. Also enjoyed it recently with the night sky captures in West Virginia.
I did have issues though with the quality of the 14mm lens. While sharp in the center, even at f/8 the corners and edges (about 1/6 of the frame) was not sharp at all. So I have been researching other 14mm primes to upgrade. I was really close to getting the Canon 14mm f/2.8, even had it ordered and shipped, but decided to cancel and research a little more (that Canon lens is not cheap).
I looked closely at the reviews of the Sigma 14mm f/1.8, and found that many felt it was as sharp as the Canon … though slightly less than a true 14mm (more like 14.8mm). Costing nearly half as much as the Canon, and 1.3 stops more of light, I ended up getting the Sigma Lens. I arrived yesterday, and after a long day at work I was still excited to play and test it into the evening for about three hours. Really checked it for sharpness at all aperture settings. The results really blew me away.
At f/8 to f/16, I found no flaws in sharpness anywhere in the frame (sharp to the corners and edges). In fact, the results even at f/4 at the corners was hands down 10 times better than the corners with my Canon 17/40mm lens at f/8 and 17mm.
As you get it down to f/1.8 though, the sharpness in the corners at infinity focus gets pretty bokehed (I think I made that word up). But playing with the live view and focusing minor adjustments, I was able to get a slight modification to the focus point at f/1.8 where the sharpness to the corners was nearly as good as in the center … SO VERY IMPRESSIVE. For night time captures where I will be using it at f/1.8, I think it will be super results.
Thinking this may soon by my staple landscape lens (getting the 150mm filters and adapter ring as well) so I can be as creative with it as I have been with the 17/40. Having both of these landscape lenses will really be nice … the 17/40 will be real handy when in the rain, and also at the beach with ocean spray. Finding a way to keep falling rain off of the open curved 14mm lens will be hard I think … unless I can make an umbrella adapter or get Mrs. Krach to hold an umbrella for me ;)
The image here was taken today while at lunch at work … 101 degrees F Summer Day … really liking the f/16 sun burst / star created with the new lens to. It is really pretty I think.
ERIS, the Very Large Telescope’s newest infrared eye on the sky, captured this stunning image of the inner ring of the galaxy NGC 1097. This galaxy is located 45 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Fornax. ERIS has captured the gaseous and dusty ring that lies at the very centre of the galaxy. The bright spots in the ring are stellar nurseries, shown in unprecedented detail. The centre of this galaxy is active, with a supermassive black hole that feeds off its surroundings.
This image has been taken through four different filters by ERIS’s state-of-the-art infrared imager, the Near Infrared Camera System — or NIX. The filters have been represented here by blue, green, red and magenta, where the last one highlights the compact regions in the ring. To put NIX’s resolution in perspective, this image shows, in detail, a portion of the sky less than 0.03% the size of the full Moon.
Credit: ESO/ERIS team
Valley of Fire State Park -- Nevada
A dramatic sky captured just before the sun dipped behind a formation at the Valley of Fire. It looks like fire eating away at the cloud that partially obscures the sun.
Thanks for your visit and all of your support. We plan to be home tomorrow, and I will catch up then. Just now, I think it is time to sleep!
The castle is situated on the Laich of Moray, a fertile plain that was once the swampy foreshore of Spynie Loch. This was originally a more defensive position than it appears today, long after the loch was drained.
The motte is a huge man-made mound, with steep sides and a wide ditch separating it from the bailey. The whole site is enclosed by a water-filled ditch, which is more a mark of its boundary than it is a serious defensive measure.
Duffus Castle was built by a Flemish man named Freskin, who came to Scotland in the first half of the 1100s. After an uprising by the ‘men of Moray’ against David I in 1130, the king sent Freskin north as a representative of royal authority.
He was given the estate of Duffus, and here he built an earthwork-and-timber castle. Freskin’s son William adopted the title of ‘de Moravia’ – of Moray. By 1200, the family had become the most influential noble family in northern Scotland, giving rise to the earls of Sutherland and Clan Murray.
In about 1270, the castle passed to Sir Reginald Cheyne the Elder, Lord of Inverugie. He probably built the square stone keep on top of the motte, and the curtain wall encircling the bailey. In 1305, the invading King Edward I of England gave him a grant of 200 oaks from the royal forests of Darnaway and Longmorn, which were probably used for the castle’s floors and roofs.
By 1350, the castle had passed to a younger son of the Earl of Sutherland through marriage. It may have been then that the keep was abandoned, possibly because it was beginning to slip down the mound, and a new residence established at the north of the bailey.
Viscount Dundee, leader of the first Jacobite Rising, dined in the castle as a guest of James, Lord Duffus in 1689, prior to his victory against King William II’s government forces at Killiecrankie. Soon after, Lord Duffus moved to the nearby Duffus House. The castle quickly fell into decay.
In the calm of early morning, the terraced hills awaken under a gentle sun. Olive groves stretch across the landscape, bathed in soft golden light. The valley rests peacefully beneath a clear sky, capturing the stillness and warmth of rural Morocco just after sunrise.
(Photographed on the way to Ouarzazate, Morocco)
Burghead (Scots: Burgheid or The Broch, Scottish Gaelic: Am Broch) is a small town in Moray, Scotland, about 8 miles (13 km) north-west of Elgin. The town is mainly built on a peninsula that projects north-westward into the Moray Firth, meaning that most of the town has sea on three sides. People from Burghead are called Brochers.
The present town was built between 1805 and 1809, destroying in the process more than half of the site of an important Pictish hill fort. General Roy’s map shows the defences as they existed in the 18th century although he wrongly attributed them to the Romans. The fort was probably a major Pictish centre and was where carved slabs depicting bulls were found; they are known as the "Burghead Bulls". A chambered well of some considerable antiquity was discovered in 1809 and walls and a roof were later added to help preserve it. Each year on 11 January a fire festival known as the Burning of the Clavie takes place; it is thought that the festival dates back to the 17th century, although it could easily predate this by several centuries. Burghead is often known by locals as The Broch, a nickname also applied to Fraserburgh in nearby Aberdeenshire.
A recent dig just beyond the boundary of Burghead at Clarkly Hill has uncovered Iron Age circular stone houses and Pictish building foundations, as well as silver and bronze Roman coins and a gold finger ring possibly from the Baltic region. Significant evidence of large scale Iron smelting has also been found, providing evidence that iron was probably being traded from this site. The National Museum of Scotland has carried out significant exploration which leads it to believe this is a significant site of interest.
Composite photography with 5 of my own images...No AI plugins used in this work. Giraffes are from the San Diego Safari Park, the cloudy sky captured above Maui, Hawaii, and the trees are from California 😎 In addition to cell phone capture (sky) , I used Canon DSLR camera ( for capturing giraffes and the tree).
Seeing varied between 4 and 4.5 out of 5 this night, and transparency was decent. Jupiter was at an altitude of 39° and a distance of 601 million km.
Separate R, G, and B SER files were captured between 0626 and 0647 UTC. Each SER was 30 s in length. This produced 7 usable stacks for R images, 7 for G images, and 6 for B images. Each stack was 175 frames for R, 200 frames for G, and 230 for B. The images for each color band were de-rotated in WinJUPOS, and the resulting single R, G, and B images were compositied and derotated in WinJUPOS.
Telescope: Celestron Edge HD 925
Camera: ZWO ASI120MM
Filter wheel: ZWO EFW
Filters: Optolong RGB set for CCD/deep sky
Captured with FireCapture
Processed in AutoStakkert and PixInsight
CM longitudes:
CM I: 342.5° CM II: 133.1° CM III: 317.2°
A lovely sky captured into the sun at Ration Point on the Pauatahanui Inlet, near Motukaraka Point, Plimmerton, Wellington, New Zealand.
Mauritius, an island often celebrated for its turquoise waters and pristine beaches, delivered an unexpected and stunning surprise: a remarkably clear view of the Milky Way. Given the island's small size, scattered population, and widespread use of bright floodlights, I had braced myself for overwhelming light pollution.
However, the clarity of the night sky was astounding. This can likely be attributed to the island's unique atmospheric conditions:
Minimal Air Pollution: With no major heavy industries and the island's low, flat topography, the strong trade winds sweeping across the vast Indian Ocean efficiently scrub the air clean of particulates.
The Indian Ocean Advantage: The sheer volume of fresh, clean air moving over the ocean acts as a natural purifier, a major boon for night sky clarity despite the local ground level lighting.
While the ubiquitous floodlights certainly create light pollution challenges, the overall conditions were a dream for a photographer.
🎯 The Serendipitous Shoot
I had not planned for a dedicated astro shoot, but I always travel prepared. My kit included the essential Benro Polaris Tracker and the compact, yet powerful, H-alpha modified Canon R10.
The opportunity arose when a conversation with a local at a nearby resort led to a recommendation for a popular spot for astrophotography. A location I recognized immediately from a daytime visit. The stars aligned perfectly and this spot was also conveniently close to an excellent restaurant we were already planning to visit for dinner.
We arrived at dusk to capture the detailed foreground, enjoyed a fantastic dinner and returned to a perfectly dark sky ready for the celestial capture.
Gear: A New Era for Canon Astro
After 15 years of shooting astro alongside landscape and architecture, I have relied heavily on Canon but was never truly impressed with Canon lenses for the night sky. That has officially changed.
The combination of the Canon R system and its new RF VMC lenses is a revelation:
Canon RF 20mm f/1.4 VCM: This lens is an absolute game changer. It rivals the legendary performance of lenses like the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art. The ability to shoot wide open at f/2 and achieve absolute, corner-to-corner sharpness with virtually no comatic aberration is nothing short of genius. If the other VCM lenses maintain this standard, it may finally be time for me to retire my trusted Nikon D850!
H-alpha Modified Canon R10: This "pocket rocket" proved its worth, delivering enough punch for a highly detailed sky capture despite its smaller form factor and low resolution.
Canon R5C & RF 10-20mm: Used for the foreground, the R5C paired with the incredibly wide RF 10-20mm (another Canon masterpiece) provided the perfect platform for a high-resolution, deep-focus base.
🔭 Technical Execution & Workflow
The final image was a blend of two separate captures, meticulously processed to combine stunning detail in both the land and sky.
If you want to know a bit more about our visit to Mauritius, you can have a look at the short film where we documented the entire journey.
Explore the Untouched Paradise of Mauritius
Please have a look at my website www.avisekhphotography.com for all my recent works.
Have a nice weekend.
Hope you will enjoy the picture.
Any suggestions or criticisms are always welcome.