dark seat

Now if I had known sundown yesterday was going to be so flippin awesome I would have taken the bigger camera. The compact defo struggles in the low light. I'd like to say we planned meticulously to head out the door in perfect time to capture the amazing light of post sunset but it was, as usual, just the time we managed to get out after fumbling around the house all day coughing and blowing noses completely failing to get anything done. Well I speak for myself. Mary probably did important stuff (between snoozing on the couch.) Anyway the cold bugs were NOT cheering her up. I had been looking at my watch to make sure we still had a couple of hours daylight running left - then noticed that 2.32 wasn't the time, it was yesterday's run time. And it was well after 3pm. Get going!

I noticed this pic got blacker after leaving photoshop so this is a lighter version.

The idea being, to able to see the light off Hunters Bog (left) and the white beast lower right.

As we climbed to the summit I was unable to keep up with Mary. Partly because I still have glue lung and partly because I was taking dozens of photos. The light was spectacular but also being quite low it is easy to get poor results. In these conditions best to take hundreds of snaps and you get the occasional lucky. 

(I shouldn't be telling you this as the purists will be shaking their heads and muttering "cheat" but the above photo is a combination of 2 images. The silhouette of M came out perfectly in one but the sunset came out better in the shot taken 2 seconds after, as M was disappearing round the hill. So I combined them to paint an optimum picture of the scene I had actually just witnessed but failed to accurately record. If you consider this to be cheating and unacceptable I suggest you move along to the websites of great pedant photographers and their collodion methods and the wet plates coming out their ass.) 

Climbing up the hill obviously improved Mary's mood.

When Mary is surrounded by awesome she likes to stand on her head, 

although she chose to face away from the actual awesome.

Running down from the summit and over to Whinny Hill there was a feeling of snow in the air, although there was none on the ground. I think the low light being reflected off the ground was maybe why; and it was pretty cold. Very cold. So cold it was doing things to Mary internally and she went off behind a bush. I was left trying to find some use for the lights of Portobello which I was having trouble keeping still enough. When god gives you lemons? The lemonade in question (again the home-made-pin-hole-camera-second-bedroom's-a-darkroom boys will be pulling faces) is ICM. The Intentional Camera Movement (movement) is about embracing the shaking. Loving the shoving. Grooving the moving. As you can see Mary was some time. Well you can't because I haven't posted the other 54 shoogly masterpieces.

This one I call

"I'm going to blow my horn till the neighbours call the jazz police"

"Invasion of the one legged sodium giraffes"

We then took a path round towards Dunsapie and dropped down to the road by the lochside. Well Mary did; I saw this image (above) and stopped to take a picture. But the camera decided to switch from "Low Light I'll take 4 images" which was hopeless while running, to "Low Light I'll employ the Flash" which is useless for landscape. Yes I know there are manual settings. I have it on iA because most of the time that means I just push the shutter release.  Sometimes the camera works with me, sometimes it doesn't. It was too dark to see, and to change settings (we hadn't taken headtorches because it was only 2.32 STILL) so I just took flash shots until it changed it's mind and went back to multiple shots. Meanwhile Mary had run off. I went round the loch a bit and took the shot below then realised I didn't know in which direction she had gone. I thought I had heard her dainty slipper-like footfalls head off right and round towards the commie pool. But she had spoken of going to Tesco's and we had been out for over an hour already; surely left and down to St Margaret's Loch could be the only sane option. So I took that and ran hard for 5 minutes not overtaking Mary and confirming she must have gone the other way. I continued on round and eventually met her near the oval cut grass figure 8 below the crags. Bear in mind it was pitch black and difficult to see if the person I was about to jump out and surprise was actually Mary, so I played it quite cautiously. It was Mary and although she had turned around and waited for idiot boy (who?) she didn't wait that long and if he was face down in the loch, well she'd be sorry, but "move on" all the same.