Last Of Skye’s Autumn Colour
A low-angle tripod-in-the-middle-of-the-river shot from the Leica Q3
Earlier this week I took a Kinloch Lodge Photography Retreat client to a location that is only really at its best for two weeks in a year. It is down in a gorge, tucked away and very well hidden. Access is tricky and very squishy. It was so good I decided to return myself with my camera. I never take my own photographs when I am out with clients - it is their day - but I was itching to get back there while the conditions were so good.
It has been a very odd autumn here in Skye. The two big storms we have had blew most of the leaves off the trees before they could have a chance to go golden brown and orange and red. Almost overnight, trees that were in full leaf changed to bare grey skeletons. The exception is some of the trees tucked into the gorges that pepper the Sleat peninsula in southern Skye. The trees tucked in there were largely protected from the gales, and have had a chance to lose their leaves naturally and change colour in the usual way.
Floating leaves at f/0.95 with Sony A7III and Mitakon 50mm f/0.95
This particular spot is a lovely location. Covered by a tunnel of trees, it looks gorgeous in the autumn. Golden leaves shed by the trees are scattered on the black rocks that line the bottom and sides of the gorge. Thick moss carpets the rocks and ferns cling to unlikely holds in the precipitous walls.
With a change in the weather coming (rain on the way), today is the last of the days of a lovely high pressure that has given us settled and bright weather for a week or so. I picked a time of day when gentle, soft light snuck into the gorge to illuminate the trees in the distance, making them glow gently. Direct sunlight would have been too much, and no sun would have been dull and lifeless. High cloud took the edge off the brightness and cast a gentle, smooth light down into the scene as I had hoped.
I really like the contrast of the golden leaves on the black rock. The leaves are like little bright coins. Leica Q3, polariser.
Gear for the day was my beautiful Leica Q3 and my hated Sony A7III. If you follow along you’ll know I’m no fan of Sony cameras that are just too complicated, hard to use, but annoyingly good quality.
Being down in a dark little valley, long exposures were the order of the day. With a circular polariser I was getting around 3-5 second exposures, which is suitable to show the flow of water through the scene and help the viewer to navigate it. I spent a bunch of time exploring different compositions with my tripod, and while the Leica was shooting longer exposures I’d use the Sony and the 50mm 0.95 lens to try some different handheld shots.
The first shot in this article is very much the “money shot” that any photographer would go for. A nice lead line in with the flowing water (while I teetered on a couple of rocks in the middle of the flowing water), leading through to a nice pool flanked by golden leaves, and on to the glowing foliage right in the distance.
Shot two and shot four use the weird and quite interesting Mitakon 50mm f/0.95 lens. A wide aperture 50mm lens is a good thing to have in the bag generally, but a maximum aperture of f/0.95 is unusual. There’s no point in having this lens and shooting it at anything other than f/0.95, and as such it is a bit of a one-trick pony. To use it in an effective manner you need a subject that works with a shallow depth of field. It’s OK in shot two, but shot four is not really the best use of it. Without a clear subject, it doesn’t work, but it was a useful experiment.
Another Sony + 50mm f/0.95 shot. I’m in two minds on this one.
It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon. Not too cold, but no midges. A very attractive subject matter. And two rather good cameras and lenses to work with. It is the sort of location where you can spend hours looking for different compositions, exploring, and generally enjoying the puzzle solving that is photography.
I think my pick of the bunch is shot three. Simple, clean and different. The “postcard” shot is the first one.