Travel photography, stock photos, fine art prints, and travel blog by Manchester, UK photographer Darby Sawchuk.
Happy 2012 everyone! Let’s start the new year off with a photo of one of my favourite places on earth: Eilean Donan Castle.
This is one of the first castles I ever visited and I’ve been hooked on the things ever since. I grew up reading Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and whatever other fantasy novels I could get my hands on, so if I couldn’t spend any time around knights or dragons, a castle would suit me just fine. Unfortunately for me, you don’t find a lot of epic castles in western Canada.
So when I took a trip to Scotland in the year 2000, I was awestruck. All my romantic, idealised visions of medieval Europe came to life. I had never walked a castle’s walls until Eilean Donnan, so it holds a pretty special place in my fantasy-loving heart. After all, you never forget your first castle, right? It was just as great when we got the chance to last year.
This particular shot of the castle deviates from the usual views you’ll spot on the postcards in that it’s shot from the East to the West. The castle itself doesn’t cut quite as interesting a profile from this side, but this blossoming sunset was too good to pass up especially after a mostly rainy day driving up from Northwest England on our way to the Isle of Skye.
This panorama was a challenging one to get exposed properly. The sun obviously overwhelmed the scene on the left side, so I bracketed exposures through the whole panorama. There was a fair amount of post-processing work that needed to be done to align the photos and get the different exposures working together, butI got there in the end to reveal this photo which captures some of the warm glow that bathed the castle that evening.
Click to see a larger image:
Darby Sawchuk is a Canadian-born photographer who currently resides in Manchester, England. He has travelled to over 40 countries and is always adding more to the list. He creates stock for multiple agencies and is available for assignments.
His work has appeared in such publications as: Men's Journal, New York Magazine, Globetrotters Guides, Footprint Guides, Western Living Magazine, The Telegraph, Forbes Traveler, Country Explorers and more. Read more.
+44 0790 992 8932
Subscribe to entries
Subscribe to comments
Darby Sawchuk on Twitter