Dan's Blog

More from the Angus Glens

Dan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:42:08 +0000

Thank goodness for Sandisk recovery software. The memory card corrupted at the end of this day, and the images were unreadable by any device. I took a leap of faith, formatted the card then ran it through the recovery software. Thankfully the images reappeared magically before my eyes!

Arbroath

Dan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:31:43 +0000

Glen Clova

Dan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:28:06 +0000

Glen Esk

Dan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:26:37 +0000

Invermark Castle

Dan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:20:00 +0000

Photography is...

Dan — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:58:03 +0100

Hidden in every moment is a window into the eternal. To see it we must first break through the complexity of the human condition. Beliefs, thoughts and senses combine to create a filter between eternity and self which defines our own unique reality. To permanently remove this filter would mean a lifetime of denying ourselves these gifts of human experience. But all is not lost. A photograph can create something eternal from the ephemeral. A perfect arrangement of transient forces which parts the clouds of consciousness and momentarily brings us closer to that ultimate elegance – the true essence of being.

~ Dan Byrne, 2008

Today's Sunrise

Dan — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:27:29 +0100

Taken from Ditchling Beacon this morning at 6am. Canon EOS 5D, 100-300mm lens at 300mm with grey grad to balance the sky with the land. Straight out of camera - no manipulation.

Loch Awe

Dan — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:57:06 +0100

March 2008. Canon EOS 5D, 17-40mm F4L, Cokin X-Pro Grad Filter.

The Rock and the Hard Place

Dan — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:08:04 +0100

The lesser photographed side of Schiehallion. Two rocks similar in shape and form but very different in scale!

My latest Highland adventure

Dan — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:06:05 +0100

Just back from a much-needed break in Scotland, and it was a good chance to get out in the fresh air and point the
camera at some lansdcapes. Here are some photographic highlights.

And finally, a shot of the famous monster. I didn't come across this until reviewing the photos on my computer today.
At the time I was trying to capture the dark waters of Loch Ness, and its patterns. It turns out that Nessie showed up
- can you see her?

Technical stuff: All shot on Canon EOS 5D. The landscapes are taken through the 17-40mm f4L lens, with Cokin
X-Pro graduated filter. The rainbow is taken with the 100-300mm Canon lens, the fish with the Sigma 170-500mm.
All handheld. All processed in Adobe Lightroom.

The Dark Side of the Moon

Dan — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 14:23:37 +0000

Last night there was a Lunar Eclipse. The experts reckoned that it was to be the
best one in a long time. I watched from my window for the "partial" stage, and
found that as the eclipse got fuller and the Moon got redder I was gradually
assembling my heavy artillery ready to try and grab a shot.
I've had a go at shooting the Moon before, and normally it isn't too difficult due to
it's extreme brightness. The Moon treks across the sky at quite a rate when
viewed with a long lens, but it's usually quite easy to freeze the action with a short
shutter speed. With the eclipse it was slightly more difficult to achieve due
the the lack of relative brightness, but after a few attempts, and pulling out every
trick I could think of, I got results that I was pleased with considering my gear is
more suited to snapping semi-stationary wildlife than distant celestial objects!

Technical details: Canon EOS 5D; Simga 170-500mm @ 500mm; f6.3; 1.6sec; ISO1600; Cable Release, Mirror Lockup; Slik 80N tripod.

More Franklin

Dan — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:23:21 +0000

Here's Franklin again, this time one month and one day old.

After a few minutes of bemusement, Franklin got used to the camera and was a
remarkably good model!

Lens and camera details as per previous post. Again, no flash was used to avoid upsetting
Franklin.

Welcome Baby Franklin

Dan — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:56:26 +0000

I couldn't resist posting a couple of snaps of Franklin, the new baby of my friends
Graeme and Jodie. He was born on Wednesday 15th November and weighed in
at 7lb 4oz. Here he is at 3 days old.

Both shot with Canon EOS 5D and Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro. To avoid disturbing the baby
with flash I used ISO1600 at f2.8.

The Ashes - Rematch!

Dan — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 08:06:31 +0100

With England dumped out of yet another one-day competition, our attention
turns to what they are good at (well better at...). With Ashes glory still fresh in
the mind, and the ink yet to dry in the history books, it is time to head down
under and defend the little urn. Whilst optimism is eternal, I feel that it is time to
remind myself of former glory just in case the inevitable happens...

I had the honour of attending the Saturday of the second test at Edgbaston on
the 6th August 2006. This cricket match has been dubbed "The Greatest
Test", and I will be forever indebted to my friend Carl who arranged the tickets.
What a game!

The setting, Edgbaston on a clear sunny day:

With England struggling in their second innings, Kevin Pietersen brought the
crowds to life by hitting two huge sixes off of Shane Warne. Both disappeared
into the crowd behind us. The show didn't last long though and Kev was
unluckily given out for 20, sweeping said same Warne.

Enter Freddie Flintoff:

Fred smote the Aussies all over Birmingham, hitting 4 sixes on his way to 73
from 86 balls before finally falling to Warne:

We'll allow him the smug grin as he took the field!

Big Kev in the field:

When Australia came to bat, they were in trouble at 134/5. It was down to
Gilchrist to save the day. He hits out with his score on 1:

But he hit it straight to Super-Fred who took the catch!

With Australia's last best hope gone, it looked good for England. They didn't
bank on the tremedous rearguard effort by Australia's tail-end batsmen. The
England victory eventually came but only by a mere 2 runs.

I'm not sure what we can expect Down Under this winter, but fingers crossed for
a good contest!

Technical details: All images shot with Canon EOS 300D with EF 100-300mm lens, except
the panorama which was stitched from several images using the EF-S 18-55mm lens on the
same camera.

Autumn Watch has a lot to answer for!

Dan — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 21:44:16 +0100

A couple of days out in the Midlands provided the opportunity to visit some
wildlife and take a few pictures along the way. The pick of the interest for me
was the falconry centre at Batsford. Now Arthur Morris I certainly am not, and
the plains of New Mexico these most definitely aren't, but it was fun
nonetheless to try and capture these amazing birds in action.

Another trip was a visit to Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands. Wet it most
certainly was, and this fellow did nothing but complain about it!

The butterfly farm in Stratford was good too. I won't bore you with tons of macro
shots, I'll post just one:

And lastly, there were some very vocal otters looking out for their young at the
wildlife park in Burford. My ears are still ringing!

Just a few highlights there - thanks for looking!

Best wishes,
Dan.

Feature Images - Waypost

Dan — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:46:59 +0100

For this image we're back in black and white and back on the South Downs at
Ditchling Beacon. It wasn't until I started putting this series together that I
realised how productive this location has been for me. I've probably visited a
handful of times, but there weren't many of those times that I didn't capture at
least one image that was of interest to me.

This was another lesson too - we were all packed up and ready to head home
after watching the sunrise when suddenly the sun burst through the clouds and
created some fantastic light beams all over the countryside.

This shot is a bit "busier" than my norm, abandoning simplicity in favour of a
sense of story.

Technical details: Canon 10D, 17-40mm f4L @ 40mm, ISO 200, 1/125sec,
f6.7, Cokin ND Grad

© Daniel Nathan Willis 2006, all rights reserved.

Feature Images - Loch Uisg

Dan — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 22:30:11 +0100

As promised, a colour photograph this time. This is an image from the recent
trip to Mull, which you may have already seen in the post dated 31/07/06. I
have singled this image out because it has quickly become one of my
favourites. For me, this image really sums up what Mull is all about - tranquility.
This evening was particularly calm. The reflections in the loch are near perfect,
the atmosphere is still and the water is clear. It was fascinating to notice that
you can see the stones on the bed of the loch for quite a distance out into the
water. The purity of this evening was captivating, and I am really pleased to
have created a shot to represent it just how I saw it.

Technical details as follows:
Canon EOS 10D, 17-40mm f4L @ 21mm, f4.5, 1/15sec, ISO 200, Cokin 2 stop
ND Grad, handheld.

I like to shoot handheld wherever possible as I feel that I can "get amongst it" a
lot better, and really find the shot that I want. The light lasts so long in the
Summer on Mull that I didn't use my tripod once during the trip.

Images © Daniel Nathan Willis 2006, all rights reserved.

Feature Images - Spotlight In St. Ives

Dan — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 15:40:26 +0100

For the second of my feature images, I have chosen this picture taken in St. Ives
in October 2003. The reason that this images will always be one of my
favourites is that I took it with my first digital camera, the Olympus C4000z. I
had a great time with that camera, and I am thrilled that I have an image that will
always remind me of those early digital days.

The tide was out, and so I decided to explore the exposed harbour. I was
mainly concentrating on the little boats that had been left ashore, the details in
the rutted sand and all manner of things that were lying on the sand that were
once under the sea. At one point I looked up and saw this boy walking quickly
across the sand as though bathed in a spotlight from the sun that had just
emerged from behind a cloud. Thankfully the C4000z was already turned on
and ready, because the poor thing was rather slow at getting started, and I was
able to grab the shot. Due to the high contrast, a conversion to black and white
was the only way to show this image. I imagine that the scene is a theatre, the
town of St. Ives looks on, and the boy exits stage left across the textured
boards.

Feature Images - Guard of the Beacon

Dan — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 14:56:51 +0100

I thought I'd start a series of posts on the blog where I introduce some of my favourite past images, explain a bit about them and why they mean something to me. If I bring this site up-to-date with the highlights of my back cataolgue then I can concentrate on moving forward in the coming months.

To start with I will introduce this image entitled "Guard of the Beacon". I think is fitting to start with this one as it was taken at the same location as the previous post, albeit 2 years ago. On this day, we made one of our early starts to watch the sun rise. Unfortunately when we arrived at Ditchling Beacon we were greeted by the thickest fog that we had ever seen in Sussex! There was an initial period of disappointment, and a cup of coffee from the thermos whilst peering into the gloom, and then we decided that as we had come all that way we may as well go for a walk. This is where I was glad that Sarah was with me. If I had come alone I would have been tempted to turn straight back and head for home, chalking it up to experience and getting back to bed. As it was, we were both keen to make the most of the situation and experience the dawn anyway. We walked a few hundred yards along the South Downs Way, and were quickly captivated by how different everything looked in these conditions. Everything became a ghostly shape in the mist, objects would appear one by one and disappear just as quickly. When we came across this tree, it struck me immediately. It looked like it was holding itself up against the gloom as though it was making it's last stand. The initial photograph didn't quite capture the mood as I saw it, and hence this is one of the few of my feature images that displays editorial manipulation to achieve the effect. This is exactly how I saw it in my mind's eye, however, and I decided to trade off editorial accuracy for the creation of the mood as I experienced it.

This was the first image that taught me to stick with it even when things don't turn out as expected. Creativity comes from out of nothing, just like this tree did on that morning.

Fuji S7000, f4.9 1/270sec ISO160.

© Daniel Nathan Willis, all rights reserved.

Dawn on the Downs 05/08/06

Dan — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:09:24 +0100

These shots were taken from Ditchling Beacon, Sussex, England from 5:30am on Saturday 05th August 2006. I've just learnt about the existence of three different twilights in the morning and evening whose times of occurence can be predicted precisely using useful websites such as http://www.cmpsolv.com/los/sunset.html On this day, civil twilight began at 04:50 so Sarah and I ensured that we were there for this time. This allowed plenty of time to set up in time for the sun to appear above the horizon at 05:30. I didn't take any pictures that inspired me greatly, but the experience was invaluable.

The above is a panorama, stiched from several images taken with my Canon 10D with 17-40mm f4L lens.

Shot with Canon 10D and 100-300mm lens at 105mm

Shot with Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro on the 10D

The Tranquility of Mull

Dan — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 20:45:38 +0100

Here are some shots from a week long stay on Mull in July of this year. It really was a peaceful place and an inspirational island to take photos. All of the below were shot with the Canon 10D and processed in RawShooter Premium. The panoramas were created using Autostitch.

We stayed on the shores of Loch Uisg. Here is a shot of it by day.

And this is it by "night" - almost 11pm and still not dark!

Another daytime shot. This panorama was stitched from 22 individual photos.

The capital of Mull is Tobermory. This is it's harbour on a pleasant evening.

A 10-image panorama at the same location.

A Mull native, the Heilan' Coo.

This character is called Winston, and he lives at the Wings Over Mull bird of prey sanctuary.

In the main, the weather was great. But even when the clouds come, Mull is still a picture.

Another panorama. This time the view from Mull of the island of Erraid.