{"id":20145,"date":"2017-09-06T10:06:55","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T19:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/?p=20145"},"modified":"2017-09-07T15:01:08","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T00:01:08","slug":"a-view-of-slioch-in-the-scottish-highlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/a-view-of-slioch-in-the-scottish-highlands\/","title":{"rendered":"A View of Slioch in the Scottish Highlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I\u2019ve been back from Scotland for over two months now, and I realized that I\u2019ve only share shared a few images from that trip here on the blog<\/a>. That\u2019s patly due to the fact that my posting frequency dropped quite a bit in June and July for obvious reasons, and also because most of my writing time this summer was spent working on my new comprehensive Fujifilm guide, X SERIES UNLIMITED<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, today I\u2019d like to\u00a0share one of my favorite landscape images from my 3-week bikepacking adventure, a view of Slioch towering over Loch Maree in the Scottish Highlands.<\/p>\n

At 981 meters (3,218 feet), Slioch is one of the most impressive mountains in the North West\u00a0Highlands. Located near the village of Kinloweche in the region known as Wester Ross, Slioch stands alone, isolated from other similarly sized peaks, which gives it special prominence.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s name derives from the Gaelic word, Sleaghach<\/i>, which means \u201cspear,\u201d and when viewed from the west, \u00a0the top of Slioch definitely as a dramatic, slender point.<\/p>\n

We had a nice, long view of Slioch while pedaling along the 12-km long Loch Maree. We had left the small town of Gairloch that morning, under clearing skies after\u00a0a solid night of rain. After climbing southeast away from the coast, we crested a long hill right by Loch Bad an Sgalaig, and began a long and relatively straight pedal alongside Loch Maree.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Our view\u00a0from the town of Gairloch the previous evening.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
A view of the Scottish Highlands alongside Loch Maree.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The scenery changed dramatically as we rode towards the loch and very quickly, Slioc came into view. Sitting at the southern end of Loch Maree, we drank in its impressive form for well over a half-hour.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re on the move, even on a bicycle, the scenery can sometimes change pretty quickly. With their wide open views and majestic\u00a0vistas, features in the\u00a0Highlands tend to hold your attention for much longer period of time.<\/p>\n

I had no idea what this beautiful mountain was called, but fortunately,\u00a0the little cafe\/gas station in the village of Kinloweche had a map on the wall, so I was able to learn the name, which was quite easy to commit to memory.\"\"\"\"\"\"My Slioch photo actually started as a black and white. Being mid day, the light wasn\u2019t particularly impressive, so\u00a0I set my Fuji X-T2 to the ACROS\u00a0film simulation, using the RED FILTER setting to add more drama to the skies. I felt that a monochrome image might help capture the peak with a timeless, yet captivating simplicity.<\/p>\n

I had\u00a0stopped a few times to shoot the mountain\u00a0as I rode alongside the loch. Eventually, as we got closer, I found a very pleasing vantage point that let me balance the prominence of the peak with the small jumble of boulders in the lower right foreground.<\/p>\n

In addition, the light hit in such a way to light up the foreground on the lower left side of the frame, and at the same time, shrouded part of the mountain in shadow. I felt this added much greater depth to the scene, instead of just having everything being lit by the \u00a0same level of sunlight.<\/p>\n

Even though I liked the initial black and white look, I set the Fuji to shoot RAW+JPEG. I wanted to give myself options for processing the photo later, in case I came up with what I felt might be a more compelling\u00a0idea. I don\u2019t always like to defer my creative ideas until later, but sometimes even I break my own rules, especially if I\u2019m moving quickly through a scene.<\/p>\n

This this. As soon as we rounded the southern end of Loch Maree and dropped into the forest before Kinloweche, Slioch disappeared from our sight, and I haven\u2019t seen it since.<\/p>\n

The Slioch frame\u00a0became embedded on my\u00a0memory card with a few thousand other shots\u00a0until I downloaded the card few weeks later when I was back in Anchorage.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The unedited Slioch photo from the RAW file.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s what the unedited RAW version looked like before I did anything.\u00a0As you can see, it\u2019s pretty dull.\u00a0I still liked\u00a0the black and white ACROS version, but I really wanted to see if I could make this image something special.<\/p>\n

Opening the image in Luminar<\/a>, which is my image editing program of choice these days, I started previewing some of the presets to see if anything popped out. I demoed a few different ones, like Image Enhancer, Vivid, Sharp and Crisp and even one called Artistic Copper Strong.<\/p>\n

There was something about the Artistic Copper preset that\u00a0drew me in. It contains some interesting tools, including a Split Color Warmth effect, which selectively enhances warm and cool colors, almost as if you were adding a very subtle split toning look.<\/p>\n

I liked how it warmed up the landscape a little bit without comprising the daylight blue of the sky. Further enhancing this effect, I slid the Color Temperature slider up towards the yellow spectrum, and then added some Clarity, Saturation and Structure, as well as a twinge of Grain and finished\u00a0if off with a touch of magic using the Luminar\u2019s Golden Hour Filter.<\/p>\n

So, although I didn\u2019t end up using the Artistic Copper preset, it helped spark some creative ideas and put me on the path towards my final image.<\/p>\n

\"\"I really like the end result. It\u2019s got some much needed\u00a0life and extra detail, but it\u2019s not over done. The colors are rich, without being too saturated, and at the same time the overall color palette is relatively subtle compared to what it might have looked like if I used the Velvia film simulation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll confess, I don\u2019t often spend much time processing my images. That\u2019s one of the things I love so much about Luminar<\/a>, if you want to work quickly, you can achieve good results with minimal time. Although it may sound like I made a lot of adjustments on\u00a0this image, it really didn\u2019t take much time to go from a flat RAW file to a finished image that I love.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve read my blog or eBooks, you know that I usually shoot my Fuji as if I were shooting film. I like to gauge my scene, pick a look or film simulation that matches my creative vision at the time and walk away with the shot I want, as opposed to shooting everything in RAW and processing later.<\/p>\n

Well sometimes, even I like to shake it up. That\u2019s the beauty of digital photography, you can approach it however you want. There will be situations where a particular scene inspires you to process and try create a special, representational photograph, while other times, you just want shoot and go, and let the camera do your processing.<\/p>\n

Neither way is better. It\u2019s all about how YOU want to spend your time and exercise your creativity. If you\u2019re interested in checking out Luminar, you can download the demo here<\/a>. If you like what you see, you can use discount code DANBAILEY to save $10 on the program.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been back from Scotland for over two months now, and I realized that I\u2019ve only share shared a few images from that trip here on the blog. That\u2019s patly due to the fact that my posting frequency dropped quite a bit in June and July for obvious reasons, and also because most of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,278,5],"tags":[524,72,343,98,552,105,89,149,574,74,92],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20154,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20145\/revisions\/20154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}