Tonight, while Jan stays in the van with the terrible twosome I am going down to Eilean Donan Castle to photograph sunset, hopefully. It is about 20 minutes walk down the road from the campsite so I don't need to rush down too early. I am going to shoot with the sun setting behind me first, hopefully it will illuminate the castle before it gets too low.
First we have all walked down to view the castle and walk the dogs, its about an hour and a half before sunset ,which is 9.50 ish
Our first view of the castle. phone image.
I have put the drone up , with hope for a bit of light on this side of the castle but its not looking like anything, there is too much cloud behind me over the mountains. But it does look like its breaking so hopefully there will be some colour later. The cloud is looking good down over the Loch, which may well colour up as the sun setts, but the best colour will be behind the castle so I may be better walking around there later.
A 5 frame Vertorama , perfect for this view, and a tiny bit of colour in the background.
I have now flown around to the other side of the castle to get a shot to see what the sunset is looking like behind. The cloud is patchy, thick in places so I am unsure how much colour we will get.
I have now decided to walk around to the other side of the castle , Jan has taken the dogs back to the van . it is almost 9.40 pm and the sun is almost behind the mountains. I need to be in the air at the best time to catch the best colour, if there is any. There are about 8 or 9 photographers already here, a popular spot obviously. I noticed this sign, this is how it should be, allowing people to fly when its quiet and safe ,instead of trying to ban drones completely at popular tourist locations like back home in England!
Looking back at the castle , its quite murky in the distance , but the cloud is all moving slowly in that direction and it is clearing where the sun is setting towards the Isle of Skye.
The castle is now lit up , which is going to look better as the sky darkens. Unfortunately the infamous midges have arrived, tiny little buggers buzzing around my head! Arghhhhhhh
10 minutes later and we have colour in the sky, its not looking like a great sunset, but enough to get a couple good images. The sun is now behind the mountains . The isle of Skye is clearly visible over the Loch in the distance.
A Vertorama gives a great view across the castle and the colour showing over the calm surface of Loch Alsh. and the sky is turning colour really quickly, and is getting very bright. I need to get shooting with the dslr to get this while it lasts.
This view is looking really good, the tide is quite low unfortunately with dry seaweed all along in front of me, luckily the drone can fly out low over to the water line which shows the reflections perfectly.
Now for the dslr, I have the Canon 5dsr with 100-400L and I am shooting portrait frames left to right, which will be stitched together to form a panorama image.
8 frames in this panorama, taken 2 minutes after the above 2 drone images
Shooting at 400mm a 2 frame merge to show the best colour, which only lasted less than 3 minutes.
Another 8 frame portait Panorama, Taken immediately after the previous image. this one is showing the blue sky above the colour, getting quite dark now so time to pack up. I only have less than 50% left on the last drone battery so not worth shooting any more from this side of the castle.
Walking back across the bridge towards the campsite the castle lights are much brighter on this side, I go down to the small jetty and take this image with the long lens at 400mm on my 5dsr .
iso 100 6 seconds f9
I have just enough battery left for a quick drone flight, to try and get a couple of images, it will be interesting to see how it will shoot in the dark , need to fill the frame with the castle light to get a decent exposure.
iso 200 1/4 second at f2.8 its not too bad for a flying camera.
iso 200 1/3 rd second. f2.8
What a fabulous evening, tomorrow we go over to the Isle of Skye .
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