Rannoch Mooor at Panorama at Sunset
Photo of the Day
A perfectly colourful sunset breaks over Rannoch Moor in the Scottish Highlands.
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Bridge over Brook near Alston
Photo of the Day
Last November, we stayed at one of the cottages at the Lovelady Shield Country House a couple of miles from Alston where our alarm clock was only the cows mooing in a nearby field. It was our base for exploring the Hadrian’s Wall and its surroundings, but I didn’t have to go far from the cottage to get a good view.
This bridge spanned a small brook that crossed the property and was only a few short steps from the hotel. The swirling current made for a great pattern in this long exposure as the sun sat low in the sky.
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Eilean Donan Castle Evening Panorama
Photo of the Day
Here’s the last one for now from Eilean Donan Castle. This is also from from this evening that threatened to kick up a serious storm with these brooding clouds. The rains never came in force, so I was able to capture this without getting too wet, though I did have to clean off the lens a few times. Scotland’s dramatic weather made for a colourful, moody background to this gorgeous location.
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Eilean Donan Castle at Dusk
Photo of the Day
Stormy skies gather in the evening above Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland.
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The Bridge to Eilean Donan Castle
Photo of the Day
The last photo of the day was a bit far away from Scotland’s Eilean Donan Castle, so we’ve moved closer and in this shot. Now, we’re ready to cross the bridge on the way out to the little tidal island that is home to one of the UK’s loveliest castles.
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Eilean Donan Castle Panorama
Photo of the Day
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.
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Staward Gorge at Allen Banks
Photo of the Day
I was looking for a photo that might be a bit more Christmasy to take us into the heart of the holiday season, but my more recent photo expeditions haven’t been to any frost-covered landscapes or snowy scenes, so we’ll have to content ourselves with something autumnal.
This image comes from Walks Woods at Allen Banks and features the fall colours flanking the river flowing through Staward Gorge.
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Hadrian’s Wall at Hotbank Crags
Photo of the Day
Hadrian’s Wall rises and falls with the undulations of Hotbank Crags.
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Hadrian’s Wall at Housesteads
Photo of the Day
I took this picture only a few feet away from the previous photo of the day, but the effect of it is pretty different. In the cool, purple of dusk, this shot really emphasizes the line that Hadrian’s Wall follows along the crags.
The Roman builders of the wall knew what they were doing. As much as they could, they used the natural cliffs and steep slopes of the land to form the better part of their defence. When the wall you’re building spans the length of an entire country, you better make sure you use every shortcut you can.
It would have been quite a spectacle to behold in its original form, but even today, it’s an impressive sight.
One funny detail I only noticed after processing the image: All the black cows are on one side of the wall and the white sheep on another. Can’t we all just get along?
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Hadrian’s Wall Panorama from Housesteads Roman Fort
Photo of the Day
A brilliant, saturated sunrise rewarded my efforts to wake early and trek up the hill to get this classic shot of Hadrian’s Wall from near the Housesteads Roman Fort. I took plenty of shots from at or near this vantage point at various different times of the day, but I think this is my favourite. It captures both the detail of the wall and its snaking path along the crags while also showing some of the surrounding countryside bathed in a light that had me applauding Mother Nature.
I’ve now managed to process a few shots from this trip as well as more from the earlier visit to Scotland, so those will trickle through in the next the next little while and I’ll try to show off images from some of the top landscapes in the UK.
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Glenfinnan Monument Panorama
Photo of the Day
The drive up to the Isle of Skye is a fairly long one by UK standards, but it certainly has a lot of possibilities for stopping points along the way. Though this was a little bit out of the way for our route, the view is worth it.
This the Glenfinnan Monument which presides over Scotland’s Loch Shiel. The monument commemorates Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite uprising – Glenfinnan was the place where he raised his standard to begin his campaign.
I was only able to get this photo after making a couple of trudges up the hill behind the monument. When I first climbed to the viewpoint, the weather decided to be rather uncooperative. As soon as my camera was out, it started to rain. I put my camera away, and the sun briefly broke through. No sooner was my tripod set up again and the rains came back. The fast-moving clouds seemed to be taunting me.
I headed back down the hill and I wandered out to the monument with my very patient wife. On the way, the clouds parted and dramatic bursts of light dappled the loch. Back up the hill I went. I got there just in time to catch the last rays hitting the hills before being sealed up behind the clouds.
This shot was easily worth two trips up the hill.
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Sligachan Bridge Panorama
Photo of the Day
On my way up to the Old Man of Storr to try to catch the sunrise, I was driving past one of my favourite sights on Skye and had to stop to catch the dawn breaking over the old bridge on the river Sligachan. Despite having gone past this place a number of times, this was the first where there was good light, so the Storr would have to wait a few moments.
I’m glad I did stop because the sunrise at the Old Man was lacklustre that day, so I happily took this as a consolation prize.
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The Old Man of Storr Panorama
Photo of the Day
I haven’t had much time to process many of the photos from the trip to the Isle of Skye in Scotland and, this Saturday, I’m set for another jaunt. This next trip is to Alston and Hadrian’s Wall will likely be the main subject of my photos. My hard drive will soon be overflowing and I’ll have even more images to try to catch up on.
One of the few photos I’ve had the chance to pay attention to is today’s photo-of-the-day offering from the Old Man of Storr. The Storr is a rocky hill sitting on the ridge that rises over much of the Trotternish Peninsula on the Isle of Skye and the Old Man is the jagged pinnacle you see in the photo below.
It took a couple of attempts to get this photo. The first morning I attempted the ascent to this position, the clouds swept in before I was in the right spot and no amount of cajoling would make them leave (actually, that seem to anger them and they rained on me fast and hard).
The second hike up the hill was much more fruitful than that blustery morning. The Isle of Skye is full of magical places and this might be one of the most magical for me. The pinnacles of rock are far more immense than this photo conveys in low resolution. The full res shot reveals a head-high sign on the path and it is completely dwarfed by the Old Man’s gargantuan size. Walking amongst those giants is like living in a fantasy novel. It’s quite a place.
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Manchester Exchange Square Panorama
Photo of the Day
Today’s image is from my current home city, Manchester and features Exchange Square and the Manchester Wheel in the evening.
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Millstone at Padley Gorge
Photo of the Day
The millstones randomly scattered around Northern England’s Peak District captivate me. These weathered stones all probably have some story attached to them and who knows if anyone remembers just how they got where they are.
This mysterious stone rests beneath a picturesque tree near the edge of Padley Gorge on the Longshaw Estates National Trust property.
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Ruin above Dovestones
Photo of the Day
This shot is another from a little walk I recently did on the edges above Dovestones reservoir in Lancashire. As I crested the rise, this tiny, ruined house and the accompanying lovely view greeted me at the top.
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Padley Gorge in Longshaw Estates
Photo of the Day
On the way back from our most recent trip to Lincoln, we stopped at Longshaw Estates, a beautiful National Trust property that provides extensive opportunities for walkers to have a good stroll.
I immediately headed for the confines of Padley Gorge and peaty water cascading over mossy stones while emerald branches swayed overhead. There I found a few photo ops including the scene below.
I’ll definitely have to go back and spend a longer time there and I’m guessing it’s a pretty fine place to be when autumn arrives.
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Lincoln Cathedral Panorama
Photo of the Day
In the past few months, I’ve been through Lincoln twice now and this is one of the many shots I’ve taken of its towering cathedral. I kept gravitating towards this particular view of the great building from a spot between the cathedral and the castle.
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Above Dovestones Reservoir
Photo of the Day
Last Saturday evening, I took a walk along the edges high above the Dovestones Reservoir and got this shot as the sun nestled up against the horizon.
This is one of those shots that I probably made more complicated than it needed to be by composing it of multiple stitched images (to get a wider field of view) and multiple bracketed exposures (to get more tonal range out of the scene). After some post process tinkering, I’m pleased with the result, so here it is!
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Bodmin Moor’s Cheesewring
Photo of the Day
The Cheesewring is a rock formation sitting atop the barren hill of Stowes Hill in Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. According to good-old Wikipedia, it’s named after a cheesewring, “a press-like device that was used to make cheese.”
Almost unbelievably, this is a natural formation. No ancient astronauts came down to pile these giant stones onto one another – this is all the result of weathering. The hill has a few other strange formations like this one and there’s a stone circle not too far away as well.
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Chesterton Windmill
Photo of the Day
Here’s another one of my experiments in using a single flash to light a scene in dozens of separate photos later combined. This one is of the Chesterton Windmill which stands by itself in a field not too far from Stratford-upon-Avon.
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Ely Cathedral Window
Photo of the Day
This west-facing window on the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral caught the light of the descending sun in an extraordinary way. The whole window seemed to be set ablaze for a few moments as the sun neared the horizon. I’ve tried to capture just how bright the light looked, but I’m not sure a photograph can show just how brilliant it was.
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Castle Drogo Panorama
Photo of the Day
On travels in the south of England, Drogo Castle’s fortified exterior and fascinating interior (no photos allowed, unfortunately) made for an enticing stop.
This image is of the front entrance to the castle. It was a bit of a tricky shot to put together as it’s a panoramic HDR shot. I shot five bracketed exposures for each segment of the panorama, put together the HDR images then stitched the panorama. It’s all rather time consuming, but the results can be worthwhile.
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Trinity Lane in Cambridge
Photo of the Day
On a recent trip to Cambridge, the late-afternoon light was providing a brilliant backlight to the pedestrians passing through Trinity Lane. It would have been a nice enough shot without anyone in the scene, but I was sure that if I could wait for the right person to pass, the image would have a lot more interest to it.
Fortunately for me, before the light shifted and faded, the right person did indeed come along and the photo below is the result.
Click for the image on black:
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.
+44 0790 992 8932
