Mull 2022

"Can you see the different coloured houses?", younger viewers will recognise this as the location for the filming of the children's CBB's TV program - "Balamory".

 

On the north-east coast of Mishnish, near the most northerly part of the island and less than ten minutes from our cottage at Ardnacross, this was the rainy morning trip for us.
 

With rain in the air, surface textures and colours presented several different options for the subjects and atmosphere. Calm waters, vivid colours and a quiet ambience. High reflections and deep blacks are the order of the day.

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The shot here is clearly focussed on the bright buildings and their reflection. Given the weather conditions - this FOV worked perfectly, on a bright day the light could have been flatter or too contrasty, the conditions were therefore just right. The end of the pier with the orange buoy gives the framing a good finish, the viewer's eye is not drawn out of the photo wondering what is next or left with a plain space.

This little Robin was jumping between the crab pots at the harbour. Definately trying to make sure everyone knew it was her harbour, she had a lot to say.

 

Finding the right background is important to give a photo a context and personality as well as giving good placement to the subject and in turn her personality. This was a dark wet day making work with colour saturation easy, the blurred background sympathetically promoting the subject. The crab pot gives a location clue and extra depth / story for the photo.

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200mm f/2.8 gives enough DoF without completely losing the netting for some placement.

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Normally any subject should be looking into not out of the frame, but here the wild fuchsias, drop in colour with their leaf highlights. There are always the "wish I had been able to ....." moments but in the end this fitted the scene as taken.

These boats have been deliberately placed here as a feature and so are very accessible directly by the roadside just north of Salen.

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There are no doubt hundreds of photos out there somewhere as everyone with a mobile phone can take it, the trick is to do something a little different, something to add interest.

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The background on this day was a flat wet grey low cloud, by no means what you would think would help; however there is always something which can be done to take advantage of the conditions. The flat relatively distracting background lent itself to a greyscale conversion turning the image into a study of the boats themselves which are left natural.

A touch of local history is also a way to add context. Mull has two very well known, carefully placed boats near Salen, which you can see above, here is just a discarded old boat well away from the beaten track.

 

This is near Croig, in a tiny remote working harbour, away from the main tourist trails. The low tide and flat lighting add colour and balance in this low contrast image. The colours here show what the scene really looked like and puts you the viewer naturally in the spot - the real atmosphere is maintained.

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More detail could be found in the water surface with a CPL, but these can be overused, the result would have been saturation which was not how this view looked and less separation for the boat itself. If there were bright sunlight and harder shadows a CPL would not be out of place; this was a subdued overcast day where colours had a soft glow, changing that would upset the real view.

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In contrast to the two boats above, the simple background with good natural colour worked easily as the background does not detract from the subject.

At 3,169' / 914m, Ben More is a Munro, the 16th highest peak in the UK & outside of the Skye Cuillins is the highest in the Scottish Isles, dominating the Mull skyline from many viewpoints, the climb starts at sea level.

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There was a break in the weather after a spell of rain, the top 200' was in cloud. Not ideal by some measures but there is always a different mood to capture, another view of the mountain with a blue sky has less interest than the cloads themselves sending shadows accross the bright sunlit slopes below, the wet surface added saturation and depth to the colours.

 

Perhaps the right thing would be a video to show the rapid movements, but the tripod weight was deemed too much with our full DSLR gear and lenses already being felt. For more technical climbs we have the Canon G5X & Hama 117 tripod, but today we chose the larger formats - See our "Gear" page for the kit list.
 

You definately meet the best people on this sort of hike and here was no exception.

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The walk itself was quiet, not too technical, but relentlessly uphill, boggy lower down and well drained stoney on the upper slopes.

A couple more photos can be found in the week's blog below and some others have found themselves as backgrounds on this website.

Saint Columba settled here in 563AD to build Iona Abbey and spread Christianity to the Celts. One of Scotland's most sacred sites, the old abbey is the burial place of a known 48 Scottish, 8 Norwegian and 4 Irish kings, (recorded in 1549), including MacBeth, what more to entice you do you need?

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With the Iona history is a huge cultural background. Other names include, from Gaelic "Ì Chaluim Chille" & Norse "Eyin Helga".

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Iona was always on the short list of places to visit, the question was time ... let me answer that quickly - it is worth whatever time it takes.

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There is a single small car ferry which takes you over from Fionnphort to Iona, the ten minute crossing leaves every 15 minutes or so. Iona is small, you don't need a car, so no need to reserve a place.

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The first sighting of Iona is an incredible view of a coastline, with the Medievil abbey and picturesque houses as a backdrop for small boats, not too busy but alive. Rarely do places really exceed your best expectations, here they blew them away.

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For photography, every direction had something, add to this the weather - bright sunlight, big clouds, clear air, warm breeze. Sometimes it is difficult to put the camera down, here we couldn't help it, the interest and cadence makes you breathe it all in.

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This is a candid photo of the group, not trying to be a stand-alone photo, just a shot grabbed. Endless landscapes without people though great as natural art, do need to be interspersed with a human element to capture a feel and mood in a blog type setting.

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No staging here, just soaking up the environment and pinching ourselves that we are really here in such perfect conditions.

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We were never in shade, despite the heavy clouds and breeze, and the backdrops hit the spot in every direction.

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We stayed up here the best part of an hour.

These young Swallows were sat unsteadily in a stiff early afternoon breeze. The parents were very busy swooping vey low to the grass catching flies. A day like this had them buzzing so they were making the most of their time.

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The location was just below the Abbey on the graveyard wall, the rough coastal grass behind swept straight down to the rocky coast. The position found to shoot from kept the rough coastal grass as the background.

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The time it takes a Swallow to stop feed then move on is a fraction of a second, This image was handheld, pre-focussed on a likely candidate, then just wait. The reaction on the shutter is just fast enough to capture one shot before it is all over. This camera has an APS-C sensor, the effective focal length was therefore 620mm then cropped.

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Wide open at f/5.6 to get the fastest shutterspeed without compromising the iso too much gives the wafer thin Depth of Field you can see here.

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One of several attempts, this was the only one which worked out as hoped for. When the camera frame-rate is around 5FPS it's all over between two shots, the mirrorless R7 Chris was using has 20+FPS and you can see one of his shots in his gallery.

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This actual view was a lot brighter than is shown here, a small aperture with fast shutterspeed to get just the highlights on the water surface still gave some added detail to the view, without too many blown highlights.

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The colour saturation was reduced substantially to near black & white, a little saturation was added for fun to the Ensign on the stern of the yacht and just for fun to the buoy at right, though barely visible.

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This is another shot in this blog where the atmosphere and mood took precidence and is included here as part of the trip rather than a masterclass in photography or processing. I don't like excessive processing which tricks the viewer, b&w does not do that.

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It does show how flexible the light and subjects were on this amazing day on Iona.

This was on the approach to Staffa, just before going around the headland to Fingal's Cave.

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The Basalt columns are part of a huge geological structure which spreads from The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland all the way to the Scottish Hebrides. Fingal's Cave which you'll see below is amazing.

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Staffa is a small island an hours trip from Mull. The cliffs and grassy slopes provides a remote and undesrurbed habitat for seabirds during the mating and fledging season; Gulls, Guillimots, Razorbills and Puffins amongst them. We were late in the year for this but Cormorants & Gulls were still plentiful.

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No editing here, just a CPL filter to remove reflections. Through the viewfinder the sky and sea really did look as vibrant as shown here.

The weather was uncannily perfect after an ideal day on Iona the day before. A few of the many Cormorants can be seen on the right outcrop.

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To get here you need to book one of the many local boats which make the trip, we sailed from Ulva, other trips start from Oban on the mainland, Iona and Tobermory.

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The trip to Staffa and to see Fingal's cave is quite high paced, if not for the boat timeschedule you could spend a day here easily.

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Fingal's cave is one of those places everyone has heard of from childhood in the UK, so finally getting to see it however briefly was another big event on our trip.

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The distinctive Basalt columns originally formed some 60,000,000 years ago from cooling volcanic lava, erosion has formed this cave over time since then. 

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If your screen or monitor you are viewing this on is colour balanced well, you'll see the stunning colours on the rocks from the lichen.

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We were lucky enough in our pit stop visit to go into the cave, some images from this can be found on this website.

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