Aurora on the Isle of Lewis

After a long hiatus I thought I would get back to the blog with a few shots of last night's spectacular aurora. Shots were taken on the Isle of Lewis at Vatisker beach looking towards Tolsta.

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr if you're not familiar with Scottish Gaelic means Happy New Year. Here's wishing everyone out there a Happy New Year and all the best for 2013.

I thought I'd post a nice summery picture of a rainbow I took from my Dad's house in Eagleton on the Isle of Lewis with my iPhone using the new panorama function in iOS6. 

Callanish round 2

Here's the best of the rest of my shots from last night

The sun going down on a beautiful evening.

The almost full (it was full moon's eve) rising.

A different view of the Callanish Stones.

It's pretty cool what you can do with a couple of torches. I took a load of shots at the Callanish stones tonight. None are edited, just as shot with long exposures, a mini Maglight and a 1,000,000 candle power torch. It's my first real go at painting with light and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

This is probably one of my favourites. Taken just before I packed up.
f5.5/Exp 120sec 10-22mm@17mm ISO100

My first attempt with the Maglite and floodlight. The moon was so bright you can see the shadows it casts in all the pictures.
f4.5/Exp 201sec 10-22@21mm ISO100

f5/Exp 157sec 10-22@19mm ISO100

f4.5/Exp 198sec 10-22@18mm Special prize for naming the constellation in the top left.

f5.3/Exp 53sec 10-22mm@18mm ISO100

An old cottage beside the 2nd circle at Callanish.
f4.5/Exp 174sec 10-22mm@13mm ISO100

I've taken plenty more which I'll probably load up soon.

Rainbow

Well, it's been quite a while since I last posted. A holiday, a week left of leave and a lot of traveling and I'm now back at work with a lot of pictures on my laptop and I'm not sure where to start. So here are a couple of black and white conversions I've done. Taken on the Isle of Lewis. The first one I decided was quite dull in colour, even if it did have a double rainbow in it. Did a black and white conversion in photoshop and used a path to create a selection of the rainbow. Used the refine edge option to blend in the selection with the surrounding sky and then deleted the black and white rainbow section of the layer.

Second is just a straight black and white conversion from the Gearrannan blackhouse village done in photoshop.

Turbine

One of the 3 wind turbines on the road to Grimshader in Lochs on the Isle of Lewis. I have to say I find these machines quite mesmerising to look and almost beautiful in a way but I'm not sure I'd like to have hundreds of them on my doorstep as was proposed for the island.

This shot was a bit of a pain. I had my tripod but had forgotten my remote control so had to rely on the timer function in order to try and get the blades in the right position. After about 40 attempts I decided I wasn't going to get any better than this and called it a day.

Canon 7D, Canon EF 24-70 @ 30mm, ISO 100, f22, 1/25

Coming home

 

Looking from Stornoway towards Tolsta with Tong, Coll, Back and Gress in between.

Looking east over Broad Bay with Point in the distance and the mountains of the mainland on the horizon.

Another view towards Tolsta with Tong sands in the foreground.

The village of Coll where I grew up. Tiumpan Head light house can just be seen in the top right.

Another shot towards Tong over the sands, Sandwick in the foreground.

Coll beach in the center of the shot. My local beach as a kid.

Stornoway looking south west.

A closer shot of the town. Goat island on the left and the castle grounds on the opposite side of the bay.

The offending plane. Not exactly a jumbo but pretty expensive for the owner I'd imagine.

It's not very often you get put into a holding pattern when you're flying into Stornoway. I wasn't even aware of a holding pattern on the island. I thought you could just cruise around at your leisure. The co-pilot came across the tannoy to announce that an aircraft had crashed on the 2nd runway and they were awaiting assistance from the fire service. This half an hour sojourn above Stornoway and the surrounding area gave some fantastic opportunities to take a few snaps. They came out surprisingly well considering the scratched state of aircraft windows. Quite a few did have to be discarded due to the engine exhaust getting in the shot.