The Empty White Room

Heather Burning.1

sebb.hathaway — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:13:15 +0000

On a recent trip to the Highlands I was privileged to observe one of Scotland’s great traditions at work – heather burning. Every year local farmers (in this case next to Loch Linnhe set light to the old heather, which burns away and allows new buds of heather to grow. This appears at night as long slowing scars on the landscape, not unlike lava flows, and is both beautiful and ethereal to behold.

Nikon D80, 50mm f1.4

Blue.1

sebb.hathaway — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:13:14 +0000

Common Blue Butterfly, photographed in it’s natural environment amongst arable weeds at Wandlebury Country Park, Cambridge, UK.

This beautiful little male was sunning itself in the last rays of light on a recent visit to the Arable Patch at Wandlebury, so I managed to fit my macro lens on and catch it on camera before it flew away in a flurry. To give you a sense of scale, the butterfly’s wings were barely 2.5 cm (1 inch) in height, so it was very hard for me to get the photo I wanted with him in focus.

Nikon D80, Sigma 105mm f2.8 Macro lens.

Bognor Regis.1

sebb.hathaway — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:17:59 +0000

At a wedding that I was recently the official photographer at I managed to take some time to myself and get down to the beach. The beach is very pebbly so I wasn’t overly keen on getting it in the shot, but I’m pleased with this elegant composition. Obviously it was taken during the day but I like the colours.

Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm lens, ND400 filter.

Portobello.1

sebb.hathaway — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:49:10 +0000

Not many people realise it, but Edinburgh actually has fantastic golden beaches. This shot of a wave-breaker was taken on the Portobello beach in broad daylight and altogether I’m quite pleased with it. I have also taken another version of the same photo but in landscape orientation which makes a great panorama.

Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm lens, ND400 filter.

Skye.7

sebb.hathaway — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:09:21 +0000

Waterfall at Inver Tote, Skye. This magnificent set of falls (there is an even bigger one further up) are very difficult to access, and you have to follow several hundred metres of narrow sheeptrack zigzagging down an incredibly steep slope to get to it. However, it is well worth the effort, as at the bottom there is a beautiful bay looking out to the mainland, this tremendous waterfall that plummets into a big pool.

Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm lens.

Drop.1

sebb.hathaway — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:59:37 +0000

I became very bored today, so I decided to try doing something I’ve been meaning to try for ages. Although I got other shots of the drop on a single head ( a lot trickier than it sounds, I had to use oil to get small enough droplets) this is my favourite shot, of a single water-droplet nestled among the feathery seeds of a dandelion head.

Nikon D80, Sigma 105mm f2.8.

Skye.6

sebb.hathaway — Wed, 26 May 2010 23:33:19 +0000

For now, this is the last of the shots that I’ll be uploading from Skye and, rather fittingly, it was also one of the last I took on the trip itself.

Taken from the Sgeir Lang slipway, it’s shot pretty much straight into the fading light, so even without my 3-stop filter on I was still shooting a 2.15min exposure, hence the magnificence of the blurred out water. However, more proudly, and you probably won’t be able to see it, is my tiny star-trail from Venus, that I hadn’t noticed I had captured until I looked at the shots when I got home.

This has still got to be one of my all-time favourite photographs of sunsets, and I just feel that the whole composition is really nicely balanced.

Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm lens.

Skye.5

sebb.hathaway — Wed, 26 May 2010 23:21:51 +0000

The last of my shots from the incredibly beautiful Fairy Pools. Although these waterfalls were fantastic, carving the rock into amazing shapes, I felt that it was more important to capture the falls in their environment. Perhaps it was me, but I think that what made these places so beautiful were their surroundings, in the rather spiffing Glen Brittle.

I’m rather pleased with this shot – it came out harder than I expected it to but I still had to work quite hard to bring the shadows out of complete blackness in Photoshop.

Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm lens.

Skye.4

sebb.hathaway — Wed, 26 May 2010 23:15:06 +0000

My suicide waterfall!

Only joking, but my method of photographing this particular shot was extremely dangerous – I basically had to hang off a tree and drop down a cliff onto a tiny rock ledge about 8m above a frothing pool of water. And then get back up again. However, I do very much like this shot, and I feel that my efforts were worthwhile. I’m more frustrated that there’s no sense of scale in the photograph, because the waterfall was actually huge, but I guess it’s a bit late to do anything about it now.

Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm lens.

Skye.2

sebb.hathaway — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:39:36 +0000

The simply stunning Quiraing rock formation, Isle of Skye. Although the prominent Prison formation will probably remain, the entirety of the hillside is shifting downhill at a rate of approximately 1m per year, forcing the local authority to continually have to repair the road that passes through the area on an almost annual basis. However, it still looks beautiful, and I’m pleased with this shot. I must confess, however, that I did cheat a little in Photoshop to make the grass that bit darker, but other than that and a little bit of sharpening, this is pretty much straight how it came out of the camera.

Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm lens