Tag: lakes

Winter walk around Pitlochry

Posted on by SteveH
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

I want to share with you my winter walk around Pitlochry, Scotland. I was lucky enough to have a few days in Scotland in November and wanted to see some of the beautiful countryside. An additional constraint was that I was travelling by train and foot. I wanted to make the most of my time and was looking for places where there was easy access to walks and tourist activities, by foot, from the train station. In the end I chose Pitlochry, Perth and Edinburgh. I took a winter walk around Pitlochry on one of the days.

Getting there by train

It was very easy with direct trains from Edinburgh and hotels in the town centre which is only a short walk from the station. To get there I took the direct train. Going home I stopped in Perth, which gave me the opportunity to take the train to Edinburgh around the coast, via Dalgety Bay, over the iconic 1.5-mile long red railway bridge, opened in 1890 & crossing the Forth estuary.

The river Tummel and Garry walk

There are a few proposals for local walks on the town’s website but they seem to miss a trick by making walkers spend too much time on the roads. The closest the site offers is the Faskally via Garry Bridge walk. If you download the map from this link you will see that large parts are on the road. The portion between Coronation Bridge and Garry bridge is in the woods and follows the nature trail. I feel that if you are able to do this portion then its only a small step to take the decision to follow the trail along the Tummel river bank and through the Faskally woods.

Starting point – the Power station and salmon ladder

I wanted to take my time and capture the beauty along the route so no rushing about. I estimate it was about 13km and with a little break for lunch I was out for 5 hours. A lovely day. The town centre is very close to the river Tummel. The train station is sandwiched between the river and town centre.

The river has a dam, power station and salmon ladder. The dam creates Loch Faskally and some exceptional photo opportunities. The power of the water is impressive.

Waterside walk to the Clunie Foot bridge

After crossing the dam there is a path alongside the river which joins the Foss road, parallel to the A9, which takes you to the Clunie foot bridge. This bridge is just below the Pitlochry bypass road bridge.

Cross the bridge and immediately turn left. The path drops gently down and take you to Faskally forest. Here you have a decision to take.

Faskally Forest and Loch Dunmore

The Faskally forest walk on the towns site gives you a circular walk around Loch Dunmore. This allows you to see the Loch, the forest and walk alongside the river. We are more ambitious and once we get to the far end of Loch Dunmore we are going to continue upstream to the river Garry. So here you must decide to stick to the river or venture up the hill to the forest. As there are plenty of river banks in the plan I chose to climb the hill and walk through the forest. It is worth noting that Faskally forest hosts, in the October time frame, a light show. The Enchanted Forest will return to Pitlochry in 2023, from Oct 5 to Nov 5. The website has all the details and tickets (opens in a new tab).

The banks of the Tummel to the river Garry bridge

The path continues northwards, upstream, towards the Marine Scotland, Freshwater laboratory, which is private. Just before this complex the path turns left to follow the river bank and the fishing sites. There is a large field on your right and the river on your left. On the other side of the river you will see the hydro electric plant which we will pass later. The path follows the river until it joins the river Garry. This continues under the River Garry road bridge and by a treetop zip wire park. The Garry bridge is unusual as it is home to a permanent bungee jump. The website has all the details of the jump and zip wires (opens in a new tab) Needless to say I did neither.

River Garry back to Linn of Tummel

Shortly after the road bridge is the foot bridge, which is worryingly limited to 10 people at a time. I was not worried and crossed comfortably. This is one of several spots on the walk with a car park if needed.

So now we start heading back downstream towards Pitlochry. But first we have to get to the spectacular Linn of Tummel. The path starts by running down alongside a large field and huge pine trees. Amongst these trees we find a flight of stairs. If you walk this way round the circuit you have to climb the stairs but on the up side get to walk down hill for the last kilometre back to town. You could decide to walk up that hill and down these stairs.

As we rejoin the confluence of the rivers Garry and Tummel we find the Linn of Tummel. The Linn of Tummel is owned by the National Trust for Scotland and more info can be found here (open in a new tab). The fast flowing river Tummel feeds into Loch Faskally here and provides spectacular rapids.

You follow the path upstream to the Coronation suspension bridge which allows us to cross and return to the route back to town.

Road walk back to Clunie foot bridge

We can now relax and follow the gentle undulations of the road back to the Clunie foot bridge. We will pass the hydro power plant and have wonderful views of the river, the Faskally forest and Loch Faskally. All this is set in the foreground to the Ben-y-Vrackie mountain.

Of note is the Clunie Memorial Arch. The arch is the same size as the tunnel that carries the water to the power station. Very impressive. More info in a new tab here.

Clunie Foot Bridge to Pitlochry

Here we are back at the foot bridge. You can walk back to the dam retracing your steps earlier. Or, like me, cross the bridge and this time turn right to head to the town centre on the other side of the river Tummel that we have not seen yet. There was a lovely view of the river from the Pitlochry Boating Station & Adventure Hire site.

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Other posts you may like

  • I went for a Spring walk with a macro lens around my home town, the images can be seen in this post.
  • I also went for a walk along the coast of France near Etretat and its famous arches

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Capturing birds in flight

Posted on by SteveH
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

My afternoon introduction to capturing birds in flight tool place at the Étang de la Galiotte. This translates to Galiotte Pond. When you visit you will see that is an understated way of describing a large mass of water in Carrières-sous-Poissy. Capturing birds in flight professionally requires specialized equipment. I need to verify that I am interested enough to make that investment. So with my existing equipment I see about capturing birds in flight.

You can see from the map the lake is quite large. The town of Carrières-sous-Poissy, which translates to Quarries under Poissy, gives a good clue to the origin of the Étang de la Galiotte. The Paris region is made up of layers of sand, limestone, mixed with various amounts of clay. Being by the river Seine transport of the quarried sand was easy. Subsequently the Étang de la Galiotte was filled with river water to make a lake.

The lake is a major feature of the new park du peuple de l’herbe which covers 113 hectares.

Today, the lake and surrounding park are the host of birds, fish and people. There is a small island in the centre to help birds nest and breed. Making it a good site for capturing birds in flight. This protected natural space hosts a village of about 30 floating homes on the southern shore of the lake. There is an active residents association.

The Yvelines region published a detailed study, in French, about steps taken to avoid the risks associated to natural disasters in the region linked to the river, the geology and other potential threats.

Now to my visit. What did I see and how did the afternoon go?

Getting There

First of all if you arrive from Paris take to the train or RER to Poissy. You can walk from the train station at Poissy. It’s a fairly level walk over the main road bridge. It will take 20 minutes, about 1.5km. If you arrive by car, then I suggest you park in the Parking du parc du peuple de l’herbe. There are several bus services which use the road bridge to get to the Poissy station. The town of Poissy has also a project to build a new footbridge (site in French) linking the station to the park.

For the less nimble on their feet, I would recommend sticking to the path that run along the river Seine, rather than those by the lake which end up as a narrow track in the woods.

Bright sunshine and water

Bright sunshine can make photography complicated. On the good side everything is brightly lit, but with that comes shadows. And the contrast can be hard to manage. Add to that water, and to a slightly lesser degree the bright blue sky, and you have bright reflections and dispersed light from the sky and water. This can make the blue sky appear grey, the beautiful water dull and opaque.

Polarization

The solution to this is a polarizing filter. You may will be familiar with polarizing sun glasses. The same filter on your objective will filter out light which is dispersed in all directions. It will leave nicely aligned light rays. The advantage that the filter has over sunglasses is that you can spin the filter to choose exactly which direction the light rays should be. This allows you to choose the blue colour for your sky and optimize the view of the water so you can see the fish etc. Unfortunately my filter was not with me on this trip.

Freezing motion

So I chose to focus on the bird-life. In June the young ducks and geese still look cute and fluffy. They become a natural subject for cute photos. There are also plenty of terns here. They fly quickly over the water’s surface before diving into the water to capture fish. And the fish don’t have much chance as they are so fast. This speed also makes them difficult to photograph.

Some starting steps

Time needed: 30 minutes

Capturing flying birds

  1. Before you go

    Empty the memory card, and take the fastest card you have. It might be worth checking what file types you are storing. In general I write RAW and JPEG files to the card. Doing this means writing takes longer and uses more space. You could just save high quality JPEG for this session.

  2. Select objective

    Use a zoom, I would say at least 135mm, preferably 210mm, or more

  3. Use auto-focus

    Set the auto focus to AI servo. You will not be able to focus manually on the fast moving birds, use the camera’s intelligence o track them in flight

  4. Choose the ISO setting

    Consider setting the ISO to 100, or 200, depending on the aperture of your objective. The smaller the aperture the less light will be collected and therefore a higher ISO can help.

  5. Set speed

    In order to freeze the movement of a bird, or anything moving rapidly, set the speed to a maximum of 1/800s

  6. Review and modify

    After your first series of photos review and adjust the settings. Too dark check the ISO and aperture. Blurred reduce the speed.

  7. Repeat

    There will be many missed shots so just keep going

SD Card speeds

There are many sizes of SD cards, but I would suggest 32GB or 64GB. Which gives plenty of room and not a totally unmanageable volumes of photos to sort through when you get home. When the technology was launched it supported a 12.5 MB/s speed. At this speed it would take 2 seconds to write a typical RAW image. Making continuous shooting for a bird in flight impossible. The technology now supports up to 3940MB/s however not all cameras support such speeds, nor do they need them. There are 3 common ways of describing the speed that the card can transfer data.

Look for card with the U3 class. These can support up to 30 MB/s which id ample for video and photo recording. There is more information on the classes on the SD card Association website.

Good luck capturing birds in flight. If you further inspiration try this external website.

Return visit

It’s a great park and I went back in the winter. You can read about it here.

I have other posts about my visits along the River Seine, for example Spring walk along the Seine

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Some of my photos are available for purchase on my Adobe Stock store the link in the menu.

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The versatility of a zoom lens

Posted on by SteveH
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

A Spring afternoon in a park gave me the opportunity to grab my versatile 18-135 mm f/3,5-5,6 zoom lens and Canon DSLR and put it to the test. Just how flexible and versatile is a zoom lens? The weather was overcast and just a little too cold to be comfortable. There were some signs of Spring, but not many. I decided to focus on the trees. As there are no leaves the branches, the trunk and the reflections on the pond had to be the source of inspiration. Light, or lack of it, would be the challenge.

To get an idea of the park these fist few photographs are taken with a wide focal length, around 30mm, to capture the landscape.

There is no bright sunlight to provide vivid colours.

But with a longer exposure and a solid base a longer exposure time can provide a compromise. Take advantage of anything nearby. For example a post, bench, fence or in my case a tree.

Using the tree, as a support, and looking up towards the sky can give an unusual aspect and 0.8sec at ISO400 lets in more light.

Zooming in low light

Testing the zoom in low light conditions isn’t easy. As you zoom to the distant subject the light reduces so you must increase the exposure time. These 2 shots show a tree trunk that vaguely resembles a dinosaur foot. The first taken with 24mm at 1/125sec, the second 135mm at 1/25 sec. At 1/25sec the risk of camera movement spoiling the photo is significant. They do show the versatility of a zoom lens and with a tripod the slight shake would disappear.

Beaten by the dull light I decided to go with the flow. What can be move atmospheric and haunting that trees at dusk.? Let’s start embracing low light. Even making it more pronounced. Here are a series of darker and darker shots.

Unexpected bonus

The last unexpected shots came whilst taking the scenes above when a dove flew past a couple of times. Leading me into trying to capture movement in low light with a zoom lens. I quickly set the speed to 1/800s, even faster if you can, but I didn’t have time to be fussy. However I did ensure I was using servo auto focus. These were then taken at 56mm and 135mm. Not too bad considering. Demonstrating the versatility of my zoom lens. I did a quick edit to make them black and white as there was so little colour anyway.

You can find out more about the parc Meissonier, in Poissy, France at the departmental website, in French, or the town’s website also in French.

I did another post on zooming later in the year which you can find here.

Some of my photos are available for purchase on my Adobe Stock store directly below. There are other landscape photos here.