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By theboss, July 25, 2010 5:59 pm

I am pleased to announce my first public display of images which are being shown in the restaurant of the Mosset Tavern in Forres. There are currently four images on display all of which are for sale. The prints are 15″ x 12″ in size and mounted and framed. I have kept the images local to the Moray area – two from Findhorn “Setting sun at Findhorn” and “Findhorn Gloaming” and two from Hopeman “Hopeman Blush” and “Crimson Sunset”.

If you are in the area please go and enjoy the excellent hospitality at the Mosset Tavern and have a look at my prints. I would love to hear what you think about it.

To find out more about the Mosset Tavern check out their website – http://www.mossettavern.co.uk or their Facebook page – Mosset Tavern

Huge thanks to Gordon, Melissa and the team for their support.

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By theboss, July 3, 2010 8:30 pm

The last time I posted to the blog I had just returned from the Outer Hebrides where I’d been able to spend some time taking photos whilst being out there doing work for my employer. I was pretty lucky to be able to do that and don’t really know when I’ll get a trip like that again – soon I hope!

Since then I’ve had my Mamiya 645j camera repaired which has enabled me to start shooting on film again. At this point in time I don’t have a scanner to scan the medium format film but I’ve been lucky enough to have had a couple of images scanned by a fellow landscape photographer (thanks again Tim). The images below were shot on Fuji Velvia 50 film at Findhorn a few weeks ago. I’m quite pleased with them and think they compare well (if not better) against their digital equivalents which were taken the same evening – I’m not going to get into the Digital versus Film debate here though.

Thankfully my camera appears to be working as it should now and I hope to start using it for the majority of my landscape work.

One or two people have been asking me if there is going to be a 2011 calendar. At the start of the year I was pretty confident that there would be – I certainly have more than enough photos for a new calendar. Unfortunately the charity that I was hoping to work with already had two calendars about to go into production for 2011 and they didn’t feel that they had the sales capacity or budget to cope with a third which is fair enough. As things stand just now it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to produce a charity calendar for 2011, I don’t have the funds to cover the costs personally either. I’m optimistic  for 2012 as I’ll hopefully be able to put more time into finding sponsors.

Recently I have begun to feel somewhat stuck in a rut with the shots I’m taking, it seems like I make most of my images at coastal locations and feel that I’ve become perhaps somewhat lazy as a result.  I think this is something that happens with most photographers from time to time, you get into the way of going for the same kind of locations or the same kind of shot.  So….. its time to challenge myself again and get out of my comfort zone so to speak. I’m now living in Forres and have Moray pretty much on my doorstep,  I would like to make the effort to get to know the area and find locations for photos away from the coast. In addition to this there is Cairngorm National Park not too far away so really I shouldn’t have an excuse for not trying. Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience with your photography  – what did you do to get yourself out of that rut?

I hope you all have a good summer and hope to have some news soon.

Until then, take care.

Chris

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By theboss, April 25, 2010 10:12 am

Luskentyre beach was the next location on my list and if I’m being honest it was probably the location that I was most looking forward to visiting. I’d seen many great photos of Luskentyre beach and from what I’d seen on Google Earth it was definitely the ideal location to go to on such a short trip.

Before going to Luskentyre I decided to investigate Seilebost which I had passed it on my way up to Tarbert, the tide was quite far out and I was able to walk right out into the bay. This is definitely another location that I would like to go to back to for a photo shoot at dusk.

On to Luskentyre!

Luskentyre beach is pretty big and has some great views across to the Taransay, Seilebost and the mountains of Harris. The sand is very white and also very soft which requires extra effort to walk along. Initially I was struggling to find potential images but as I walked along the beach the light was beginning to  change and I was starting to see potential images, infact I was starting to feel a little spoilt for choice. There were little clumps of grass at the bottom of the dunes that caught my eye and and the dunes themselves were looking good in the evening light.

The sun was getting quite low now and I wanted to try and see a bit more of the beach before getting some dusk shots. The beach heads round in the direction of Seilebost, the patterns in the sand as a result of the tides help add some texture for the photos below.

The sunset itself wasn’t exactly spectacular and I tend to shy away from taking photos of sunsets these days and wait for the gloaming instead. About ten minutes after the sun had set the colours in the sky really started to come out creating colourful reflections in the wet sand.

One thing that I’d noticed when I was at Berneray the previous evening was how the place seemed to glow – I think the white sand has something to do with it. The effect seemed more apparent at Luskentyre and helped create quite an atmosphere for these final images.

I’m really pleased with these images and I hope that you like them too.

In my next post I will cover the last night of my tour where I went to Dalbeg on Lewis. Until then, take care

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By theboss, April 23, 2010 11:25 pm

After visiting Barra I finished up the day on North Uist in a place called Lochmaddy, the ferry from Skye stops here. I was staying in a fantastic little hotel called the Tigh Dearg Hotel – I can thoroughly recommend it. I had a bit of a dilemma as to where to go for dusk photos and after much dithering I took the plunge and drove over to Berneray.

Berneray is a small island just of the tip of North Uist and is connected by a causway. The island is roughly 2 miles by 3 miles in size and has approximately 125 residents.

I was aiming for the long beach which runs up pretty much the whole of the west side of the Island and after a short while I arrived at the location and made the 10 minute walk to get to the beach. The sun had just set as I arrived which meant I didn’t have much time to find a spot and get set-up, luckily I didn’t really need to go too far. From here I could see the island of Boreray and Pabbay and the mountains of South Harris – see the map below.

The beach was like many of the beaches on the Outer Hebrides – soft white sand and large. In the light of the gloaming the whole place seemed to glow, it was breath taking and I think the photo below has captured that glow. On the horizon you can see the mountains of South Harris

Here are a selection of images captured on the beach at Berneray.

The following morning after completing work that I needed to do in Lochmaddy I had a couple of hours to go until the next ferry across to Harris. The hotel owner had recommended a beach known as Traigh Ear which wasn’t too far away from the hotel on the north west coast of North Uist. I went there to check it out and was not disappointed and is definitely a location I would like to go back to to explore more. Here are a few shots that I got while I was there, due to the time of day the light was harsh again just like it was the day before on Barra.

The thing that struck me the most apart from the sheer size of the beach was the large ripples left in the sand by the tide which I hope I’ve managed to pick out in the photos.

After visiting Traigh Ear I caught the ferry from Berneray back to Leverburgh on South Harris. I had some work to do in Tarbert and then I was planning to visit Luskentyre beach in the evening – this will be the subject of my next post.

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By theboss, April 22, 2010 11:21 pm

In my last post to the blog I mentioned that I was going to the Outer Hebrides, I’ve now returned from that trip complete with a selection of photos that I’m very happy with. The trip was quite a marathon in terms of the distances travelled in just a short space of time, I never really considered quite how big the islands were until last week!

After an early start on Monday morning I had to head down to Leverburgh on South Harris to catch the ferry across to Berneray and then drive down to Benbecula to do a job there. I was very impressed with Harris, the North is pretty mountainous and the views you get as the road drops down to sea level in the South are lovely.

On Monday evening I had a chance to head out for photos. I’d decided to go to Culla beach which was just a few miles away from the hotel. I walked the entire length of the beach while waiting on the sun to go down and as nice as the beach was I didn’t really feel inspired. That soon changed once the sun started to set, the clouds started to break up nicely revealing a colourful dusk sky. Here are some images that I got on Culla beach.

Culla beach turned out to be a good location.

The following day I had drive down to Eriskay to catch the ferry across to Barra. My work on Barra didn’t take too long to complete which left me with just over three hours to kill until the next ferry back to Eriskay. Someone recommended that I should head across to Bhatarsaigh (Vatersay) which is linked to Barra by a short causeway. I headed across and drove to a location known as Uidh where there is a little cove which looks back across to Castlebay – the main town on Barra. The photos below were taken at Uidh. I don’t normally take photos in the middle of the day in conditions like these as the light is simply too harsh, however seeing as this was the only time I was going to have on Barra then I didn’t really have any choice.

While I was taking pictures here I was joined by a little dog who kept coming up to see what I was doing and following me about the beach. She was very cute and very friendly, a nice wee dog.

After this location I decided to go for a drive around the Island which if I’m being honest didn’t really take long. I ended up round by the airport – the one where the runway is the beach! Unfortunately I didn’t see any planes landing or taking off there but it is quite some beach that’s for sure. Just a few miles beyond the airport is a beach at a place called Eoligarry. I stopped at the side of the road on my way to the beach because of something that had caught my eye. Heaps of snails were grouped together on the fence posts, the photo below will show you what I mean. I’ve never seen this before.

The images below were taken on the beach at Eoligarry. I don’t think they do the beach any justice due to the harsh daytime light as mentioned earlier.

Overall I was pretty impressed with Barra and I think I would definitely like to go back there sometime in the future for photos at more favourable times of the day for photos.

Once I’d finished here it was time to head back to catch the ferry over to Eriskay and drive up to Lochmaddy on North Uist via Lochboisdale (South Uist) for work related stuff.

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By theboss, April 3, 2010 7:44 pm

I’m pleased to announce that all three of my limited edition prints are available to purchase through the online store on my website. I do hope to add more prints over the coming months. If you would like to know more about the prints then click on the Purchase Prints link on the site or click here. Postage on all limited edition prints is free. It will normally take two to three weeks to supply a limited edition print due to the fact that I rely on a third party company to produce my prints for me.

Within the next couple of weeks I will be travelling to the Outer Hebrides to do some work for my employer and will be spending 5 days out there. The trip will see me visit the Isles of Lewis, Harris, Berneray, North & South Uist, Benbecula and Barra. While most of my time will be spent travelling between the sites I need to visit I hope to squeeze some photography in – especially during the evenings. Some of you may know that the beaches out there are simply stunning and I hope to try and shoot a few of them. I’ve been using Google Earth to look at potential locations, the satellite and 3D views that it offers have been very helpful in giving me get an idea of what a location will be like.

Here’s an example of what I’ve been looking at on Google Earth

The above picture is a 3D Google Earth snapshot of Scarista beach on the Isle of Harris – a location that I’m quite keen to go to, as you can see I get quite a good idea of what the landscape is like by using this tool.

Hopefully the weather will be kind to me while I’m there, however as long as the rain isn’t horizontal I’ll still be heading out for photos. You don’t need sunshine and blue skies to capture great photos.

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By theboss, March 6, 2010 11:33 am

Its getting close to that time of year where Edinburgh based charity SiMBA have their annual charity dance and auction. For the last couple of years I’ve donated a signed limited edition print. Last year’s print – “Moody Elgol Dawn” sold for £500 in the auction.

This year I’m donating an image which took me by surprise in terms of how well it came out.

Almost a year ago I went down to a place called Seacliffe near North Berwick, East Lothian to take some photos at sunset with a good friend of mine who is an excellent photographer and a great advert for film photography.  Seeing his work had persuaded me that I should have a proper go of using my medium format film camera. This was to be the first time in three or four years that I would use film. It was quite a strange (but good) experience going back to using a camera that was completely manual and had no screen on the back to review what you’d just taken. Anyway we continued to shoot after the sun had dipped below the horizon and we had an excellent view out to the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth where the colours were simply beautiful. In the end I came away with this shot below which I honestly didn’t think would turn out as well as it did, it has turned out to be one of the photos I’m most proud of.

Getting back to the print itself, I’ve ordered up a 24″ x18″ print which will have a 1″ border all the way round therefore the actual paper size will be 26″ x 20″ – this will be the largest print I’ve had produced. The limited edition will be restricted to 25 prints and I’m donating print number 1 to SiMBA’s auction just I’ve done for the last couple of years. I hope that matches or beats the amount raised by last year’s print. I’ll let you know how it goes.

If you would like to know more about SiMBA then click on this link here >>>> Click Here! <<<<

If you are interested in purchasing a limited edition print from me then contact me direct through the contact page on this site.

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By theboss, January 5, 2010 11:33 pm

Happy New Year to you all and welcome to my first post of 2010.

Winter at Loch Morlich

I hope you all had a great Christmas.

For me 2009 was quite a year, I finally managed to get a job in Inverness which I started at the end of November which meant I could finally join my wife who had been working up there since February. 2009 also saw me return to using film again with medium format gear.  A couple of friends who shoot film kindly scanned some of the images for me so I could share the results with you all and make some prints. Due to circumstances I wasn’t able to get to many of the locations I’d planned to visit for  photos which meant I wasn’t in a position to produce a 2010 Calendar. Now that I’m living and working in the Highlands things are looking good for the 2010.

I am currently intending to continue to shoot both film and digital although currently the emphasis is going to be on digital as my film camera is needing repaired.

I’m determined that there will be a 2011 calendar and was really disappointed to not be able to produce one for 2010. I’ve got a number of images for the next calendar already and with a bit of luck I’ll get the rest before June in order to have the calendar ready and printed for the Autumn. I think I know which charity I’m going to support, the major hurdle is going to be getting the funding to get the calendar printed, unfortunately its not cheap to print. I’ve been lucky the last few years, hopefully this will continue.

Over the coming months I plan to try and explore the Highlands more and hopefully get images of places I’ve not been to or photographed before. Keep an eye on the gallery for new images.

Back to the present and the snow that we’ve been having. Despite the disruption that it causes, the snow has been absolutely beautiful and I was able to get out between Christmas and Hogmany for some photos. Its been bitterly cold up here but I managed to get some shots out on Dava Moor (between Granton and Forres), Cairngorm and Loch Morlich where temperatures were down at -12 deg c. The picture at the top of this post was the last shot of the day at Loch Morlich. The snow looks like it’s going to continue for a while yet and with a bit of luck I’ll manage to get out for some more photos.

Have you been out to get photos of the snow? What are you planning for the coming year?

In the meantime I’ve posted a few more images of the snow.

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By theboss, December 2, 2009 11:18 pm

Its been a while since I’ve been out taking new photos and with winter now upon us it is dark when I leave for work and dark by the time I leave work. This has given me some time in the evenings to review images that I’ve taken over the last year or so. I have found one or two images that have not been worked on at all for reasons I don’t know why and other images I’ve simply felt that I could improve through either changing the crop or simply making minor adjustments to the levels.

I think its a good thing to go through what we’ve done before and if its been a while since you’ve looked at those images then it can be like approaching them with fresh eyes so to speak. It gives you that chance to re-interpret the image.

I don’t believe in making large changes to images, for example some photographers are quite happy to drop a new sky into an image – this is nothing new of course but its not something I would do. I’m more than happy to make adjustments to levels, contrast, cropping and saturation to change the look of an image but that is generally as far as I would go.

I have found that over time my method of processing images in Lightroom or Photoshop has changed and that the process of reviewing my images gives me a chance to apply those newer methods and re-interpret them. The newer methods may not always have a profound change on the original image but sometimes they do, it depends on what changes have been made.

I would say don’t be afraid to go back through your collection of images, firstly unless you’re ruthless with what you keep and what you delete then you are bound to find a few images that you simply overlooked because you saw something more immediately appealing in another. Secondly, see it as an opportunity to re-interpret some of those images. you may be surprised by the results – a new technique that you have learned since you originally processed the image in Photoshop or simply a different crop may have a pleasant and positive impact on what you already felt was a good image.

Here is an example. The two images below are created from exactly the same raw file.

The image on the left is my original interpretation of the photo. At the time I was pretty happy with it and I was using my latest processing methods at the time in Lightroom.

The image on the right was produced today, applying my current processing method and changing the crop. I’ve lightened the image simply by increasing the exposure to +0.35 and adding some fill light to lift the mid-tones which were perhaps too dark in the original version. I also changed the colour profile from “Camera Faithful” to “Camera Landscape” and set the saturation and vibrance to zero – doing this has made the colour of the sand look more like what I remember. The biggest change however has been to change the crop from a 5 x 4 crop to a square crop, I’ve done this to try and bring more balance in to the composition and eliminate the empty area to the left of the rocks. Personally I feel that this is a better interpretation of the image than the original version, you may disagree of course.

The image below was taken at Findhorn beach in Moray. For whatever reason I appear to have ignored it altogether. When I saw it this evening I felt that it was quite a usable image and deserved to be processed.

Finally, as mentioned in my previous post I have relocated north from Edinburgh to Forres. I’m hopeful of being able to get out and take some dawn photos this weekend. I’ll be taking both my digital camera and medium format film camera along for the shoot, with a bit of luck I’ll have some new images to post later on Saturday. I’ve seen some wonderful sunrises while driving to Inverness over the last week or so, I’m hopeful of a good light show….. if not then expect something a bit more moody.

Until then… take care.

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By theboss, November 18, 2009 10:35 pm

Since my last post a lot has happened. I finally have a job to go to in Inverness and can look forward to being together with my wife again and not have the weekly trek up and down the A9. I finished up with my previous employer last week and have been spending this week packing. I start my new job next Monday (23rd Nov).

As things settle down I should be able to get back out with the cameras and make some new images to share with you all.

I have recently signed up with Redbubble – a website dedicated to photographers, artists and designers. Open edition prints are available through this site. You can choose from Greetings Cards, Matted Prints, Mounted Prints, Canvas Prints and Framed Prints. To purchase open edition print then click on the Red Bubble button at the bottom of this post.

Limited edition prints are only available directly from me – use the purchase prints link on in the main menu to find out more.

I hope to start updating this blog on a regular basis… until next time, take care!