Skye Boatyard 2
Hi all,
It’s been a filthy couple of days outside due to a Tropical Low/cyclone which has been wandering around the Coral Sea for the last week, trying to decide whether it will cross the coast or not!
Recently I upgraded from Lightroom 3 to LR 5, so, while the weather has been wet & wild, I have been going back over some of my files to see what difference it makes. Without going into too much boring detail, the upgrade was well worth it with some new tools such as the Radial Filter and a revamp of exsisting tools such as the Spot Removal giving you more options for tweaking your images.
One tool I have been impressed with is the Highlight Slider which is brilliant for retaining detail in skies which I was always struggling with especially when conditions were light o/cast skies. It is nearly like finding an extra two stops of dynamic range in your camera!
The Clarity slider has had a makeover as well and they seem to have put it on turbo so it needs to be used carefully unless you want mid-tone contrast to make your images look like they have a sandpaper texture applied.
I have previously posted about this Skye Boatyard, while having a look at some files I played with these two different viewpoints of the same scene.
For me, they really bring back the bleak & forlorn weather & scenery of that day!
White Houses
One thing I loved about driving around Scotland was the farmhouses, they just seem to suit the landscape perfectly no matter what the weather! White is the universal colour, chosen because it’s cheap and easy to re-apply. I would drive through a landscape devoid of trees and buildings and around the next corner there would sit a white house as a counterpoint to all the dun coloured grasses covering the slopes.
These are a couple of images I managed to get on a blustery morning in the north of Skye,blowing a gale and frequent showers!
It’s a pretty dramatic landscape, but the buildings help define it and give it more context, don’t you think?
Skye Boat
I am a great one for heading down side roads just to see what’s there. In Scotland, once you are on the road track you are commited to the end as they are so narrow!
Sometimes you find something interesting, often it’s a bust. This road ended at a rather non-descript jetty & boat ramp but as I looked around I spotted a rather different boatyard than in my last post.
Loved the Scottish colours (blue & white) as well as the rock enclosures but what really intrigued me was the stone anchors which I guess was to stop these heavy boats being blown away by the strong winds which these islands are subject to!
Skye Boatyard
My first night on Skye was spent at Kyleakin which is near the end of the Skye Bridge. I decided to go for a walk out to the ruins of Castle Moil and came across this boatyard which had seen better days. The lowering leaden sky and the cries of the gulls seemed to suit the melancholy look of this place so I spent the next half hour here. Never did make it out to the ruins!
Castle Moil is in the background, legend has it that it was built in the 15th century for a Norwegian princess called ‘Saucy Mary’ who would hang a chain across the narrow strait and charge a toll on boats trying to use the strait!
Island Images Photo Blog 