Campsie Linn:  Thurs 12th August 2100 ish

I was minding my own business and having a good dance along to my wii game when Ian texted, suggesting we do a twilight shoot, like right then. So it was off with old combats and on with some warmer clothes and out the door to a proper photo trip. Yieahy! The sun was just starting to set so we headed west along the river in the hope of catching it set over the water. After a small trip down a odd back road we ended up at Campsie Linn. This is usually a quiet area as is not the easiest place to get to and many don’t know of it, but this night the small car park was full and the road packed with parked cars. Very Odd. We decided not to investigate and headed down the other road to the fishing area close by. A short walk brought us out at the river side and we set up to capture what light there was.

I had remembered my tripod for a change which is a good thing as slow shutter speeds were needed to capture the light and movement in the water and clouds. So with low ISO and high aperture the shutter was about 15-20 secs. My wide-angled lens is too big for my filters so I was unable to block out more light for lower speeds. I did however get some fabulous shots with it due the nature of the all encompassing lens. As the light started to fade we could see flaming lanterns exist the trees at the Linn itself and rising on thermals to grant their wishes, which was maybe a little odd for a summers evening in Scotland. Unfortunately with the wide lens they were just blips on the horizon. As the light got more and more dim the shutter speeds got lower and with a bit of experiment we found that with my camera on “bulb” mode I could use the remote shutter release to get longer exposures by pressing the button once to open the shutter and then pressing it again to shut it. This meant very long shutter speeds with no holding down shutter buttons or cables, very handy. However there is nothing like long shutter speeds to let you see how dirty your lens actually is.

Just after darkness really stared to settle in, the bats came down and the Linn camp had ended their night in a fiery water display, no idea what they were up to. Our shutter speeds were down to 10 mins and the batteries were starting to complain, but i did get a lovely shot before my battery gave up entirely. However the lens and sensor weren’t very happy with such long shutters and it took a lot of photoshop work to pull out the impurities. After the battery went we decided to call it a night as we could hardly see our way back, so we packed up our stuff and hiked carefully back down the river to the car. The low shutter speeds meant that we didn’t get as many shots as usual as each shot took longer and there was no postponing the sunset, but I am happy with the shots I did get and it was excellent to be out on a proper photo trip again.

10min Exposure, Lovely but left impurities.