Last of the Winter Snow
Having spotted that the last of the snow on the hills had adopted an interesting marbled look, I took a spin up to Arthur's Seat on Saturday, 6th March, to try to get a decent view of them... and anything else I could see worth a shot. I enjoy getting up high and then zooming in on things! The light was nothing special. I could see some showers away to the south over the Moorfoots and Soutra, but with 14 miles of (not very clear) air for the light to travel through it doesn't half flatten the contrast. The RAW processing software rescues the contrast a fair bit. The Pentlands were only 5 miles at their closest point and gave a better result. Looking the other way, Cockenzie Power Station was 7 miles to the east, with a nice calm sea between there and Portobello & Joppa. Further out east, there was an uninterrupted view to Aberlady Bay with Berwick Law beyond and the Bass Rock poking its head up 21 miles away.
Click on the thumbnails for the larger images
With an elevated position it afforded the chance to do a couple of panoramas. The usual problems resulted, as neither subject lay along a flat horizon, so you are stepping down as you go across and you end up with a thing looking like a side view of a staircase. It takes a bit of twisting and cropping to get back to a rectangle, and you hope there are no crooked buildings that give the game away (er... like Prestonfield House does in the first one!)
The first panorama is of Duddingston Loch, and is composed of 6 shots, stitched together. The file size is 840 KB.
Being 750 pixels high, by 4312 wide, after downloading make sure you have it at 100% zoom (for example in Firefox, just click the magnifying glass '+' tool into the image) and use the scroll bar to pan across it.
Prestonfield House is tucked in to the top right corner
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| Pentlands from Arthur's Seat | Sun on the Moorfoots | Duddingston and Portobello, with Berwick Law in the distance, and a white Bass Rock thanks to sun and gannet guano! | Duddingston Loch |
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| Hillend artificial ski slope | Rain over Gladhouse | ||
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| Soutra, with Humbie in the foreground | Cockenzie Power Station... | ...and with Portobello in the foreground (pity about the electricity towers!) | Berwick Law and the Bass Rock, with Aberlady Bay in the foreground |
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| Duddingston | Edinburgh Southside | ||
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| Prestonfield House | Light fading - a 4 second exposure - and the cars go blurry |
The second panorama is of the Pentlands, and is 8 shots stitched together. The file size is 1.12 MB, being 750 pixels high x 7482 wide.
Just as happened at Roslin Glen, the light was just getting good when I realised it was sunset and the notice on the barrier going up the Queen's Drive said it shuts at dusk - when exactly is that? Give me a time! I didn't want to risk getting stuck so I headed down the hill. There was only one other car still up there, so I was guessing it was time to get out. As I drove round to the west side I was greeted with a stunning red sky and the sun hitting the horizon. Too late! Next time I'll need to leave the car at the bottom and do some extra climbing!
The first panorama and the first 3 shots were taken with a 24-105 mm lens. The next 2 were taken with a wide-angle 10-20 mm, and all the rest were taken with a 100-400 mm. Once I get it on, it's hard to get me off it! I used a 3 stop ND grad a fair bit to hold on to the sky - a couple of times a bit too well!