My walk this week is a celebration of the different weather conditions we enjoyed under Scottish skies recently. I won’t say much more than that. As you will be able to see below, we relaxed to beautiful sunsets, cold winds, and water not just ebbing and flowing with the tide but also falling from the sky. On one occasion this produced a thunderous roar as the drops hit the tin roof above us in the middle of the night.
On my walk this week I want to share some of my favourite photos of spectacular sunsets from the two weeks I spent in Scotland. The videos I posted while there could not follow the ever changing light for more than a few moments and the atmosphere created by the setting sun on successive evenings was literally awesome.
From the pastel tints and shades looking in one direction to the drama of a fiery sky in another, the reflections on clouds above and water below never ceases to amaze me.
However, I couldn’t photograph one of the most impressive evening skies I have ever seen. I was driving home at the time and as we crossed the border into Wales the sunset was unbelievable, unrealistic even! Yet it was real and will be one that lives on in my memory – it was a good way to arrive back from a much needed and, in spite of Covid-19, much enjoyed holiday. And we were back just in time for another lockdown!
A couple of the curlews calling in the soundscape above are from one of the videos I posted previously – the others were separately recorded and are a natural (and phenomenal, to my mind) part of the evening landscapes/seascapes in the photos.
Click the play button for the soundscape and then click the first image below to see the full images larger.
My walk this week is again from three years ago, when it seems as though the weather was colder and there was thick frost on the ground – we haven’t really had that yet this year.
The walk was in Penclawdd on the North Gower Peninsula and my selected images and soundscape below tell something of the atmosphere of the place as it looks out across the Loughor Estuary and Burry Inlet to Carmarthenshire.
The clear sky and open space is something I really appreciate at the moment, working indoors in a warehouse all the time as I am, and not seeing much daylight.Continue reading
My walk this week is more of the mind than the body with memories of curlews calling in the evening light and sunsets of south west Scotland back in September.
I was particularly keen and hopeful to capture the sounds of the evening birds across the sandy, muddy bay – in particular the curlews, if they were there. In recent posts I have presented soundscapes recorded on my phone but I had taken my field recorder (Fostex FR2-LE) and shotgun mic (RODE NTG 2) for the purpose. And I was in luck –Continue reading
I have some Scottish skies to show you. With all the dry weather we have had this Summer the light in SW Scotland was unique. In some of the photos below it may look as if we had some poor weather while there but that is not really the case.
At times the light was such that it was difficult to differentiate between the different aspects of the sea, landscape and sky. It prompted me to go abstract and emphasise the effect because that seemed more realistic. The second shot below is deliberately out of focus, blurred, but the only reason the shot of the swans is not sharp is because I was having to act quickly to capture them in flight.
Over the next couple of weeks or so I will not be posting My Walk this Week – instead I would like to show a selection photos I took on various walks in Scotland while on holiday.
