Pages

Thursday 21 March 2013

Go Fife: Seafield, Kirkcaldy


Seafield beach, Kirkcaldy on a Thursday afternoon in late March.  I arrived with about an hour to go before low tide (due at 4pm) to see the waves rolling in and a bit of colour in the heavy sky so stayed for about 2 hours.  Was absolutely baltic but you tend to forget the cold when you absorb yourself in rocks and waves and cleaning filters and watching for rogue waves (above).  

An Inukshuk is a stone landmark or cairn built by the Inuit and other peoples of the Arctic regions of North America. The Inukshuk may have been used for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for travel routes, fishing places, camps or hunting grounds as well as other uses.  Today I decided to build my own version of an Inukshuk using big boulders next to the sea.  As the tide was due to come back in it would be temporary only but would serve as a prop.  The stormy weather migrated westward and was replaced by a brief interval of blue sky before more overcast conditions signalled an end to the best light at which time I called it a day.

Seafield beach is on the south side of Kirkcaldy.  Accessed from Seafield Road, off Kinghorn Road (A921).  The gate to the car park is automatically controlled to open at 6:30am and close at 10:30pm.  There is a height restriction for cars only.  

Sunday 10 March 2013

Photo of the Month: February 2013

Shadowlands, Loch Ard Forest, Trossachs - Shortlisted: OPOTY 2014
Loch Ard Forest, Trossachs


18th February 2013, Loch Ard Forest.

A perfect winter's day Loch Ard Forest, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National ParkLoch Ard was a sheet of ice with the low sun creating pockets of mist in its more sheltered bays. Some sections of the shore were completely frosted over. I walked a circuit from Milton along the forest roads on the south side of Loch Ard to coincide with sunset. On reaching a footpath which loops around a particularly rugged section of the shore, I noticed this scene which was quite magical.  Fearing the sun might at any moment drop below the hills behind I climbed to a vantage point above the path, set up my tripod and camera and worked quickly to record the scene.  It turned out to be one of the finest afternoons photography I have had.  

Technical Info:

Taken with a Canon EOS 5D mkII
Zeiss Distagon T* 21/2.8 ZE lens
EXIF: ISO-100 / 0.3 sec / f/16
RAW File converted to TIFF in Canon DPP, developed in Adobe PSE9

Shortlisted image - 'Light on the Land' category - Outdoor Photographer of the Year 2014

Featured in Outdoor Photography Magazine - Locations Guide / Viewpoints - Issue 188 / Feb 2015


Website  /  Profile

Friday 1 March 2013

MOO Business cards

I asked Google a question on Tuesday "can you use the Flickr logo on business cards".  A list of answers came up on the screen.  One was for a company that would give you 50 FREE business cards with your Flickr Photos on the reverse so I clicked through to the moo.com site.

MOO / Flickr advert for Business cards
Sure enough, they would give you 50 business cards with your personal details on one side and a photo from your Flickr site on the reverse.  You could upload as many photos as you wanted (up to 50) and they would print them on the reverse.  They call this 'printfinity'.  Seemed to good to be true.  All they wanted was £3.50 for P&P.

Registered with them and then went through their menu system to upload photographs directly from Flickr. Decided to use 10 photo's and it took about an hour to complete the process.  MOO would print a small version of their logo on the picture side of the card to advertise their brand.  Seemed fair enough as they were FREE.  

Today they arrived.  Wow!  350gsm card with a rich matte finish!

Have now got a small portable portfolio I can carry with me.

9 of the photos I selected (click to view at full size)