Rannoch Station

Rannoch is a remote station in the middle of Scotland. As you can see there is very little around the station. Hill walkers often use the train to get to a location, and then walk back.

Rannoch Moor

We had a trip out to Rannoch Moor today-what a beautiful place!

More from Barcelona

This was my favourite of Gaudi's buildings in Barcelona-how pretty is this apartment building?
And what a fabulous view these people had of the Tour de France
(although it is much more fun to be at street level, in among the action!)

And some detail:

Ducks

We had a day out today-up through GlenShee, and on to Braemar.
We are very familiar with braemar because we used to there a lot when we lived in Aberdeenshire.
I don't know how many hours were spent when the kids were little pulling them along on the flying fox in the park. But one of our favourite things to do there was to go to the duck pond and feed the ducks. It was very quiet there today-just me and the sound of my camera shutter and the ducks quacking. It was very peaceful and I loved watching the antics of the ducls splashing around in the water.

So here are some of my favourite photos of the ducks:


I love above one because of the water-it looks so clear and I love the circular ripples around the duck.
And these below I love for other reasons-detail, reflections, actions...

Vik market

Vik is a small town outside Barcelona, and we visited the market there while we we in Barcelona.

Tour de France

We were fortunate that the Tour de France passed through Barcelona while we were there. We're big fans of the Tour, and this is the third tour I've had the good fortune to see.
So I was experimenting with shutter speed when I was taking these photos, trying to capture the movement and speed! This is one of my favourites-even if the head is cut off-I like that the focus is on the legs-which, after all, do all the work!!

So this one was using a fast shutter speed to freze the action...

and this one was a slow shutter speed, panning the camera with the bike-in order to keep the bike sharp, but blur the background. So I haven't managed to keep the bike sharp-but it's still OK.

And a collage of my favourites:

You can click on the image for a closer look.

Thistle?

Well I don't think it's a thistle-but it's thistle like! We were over near Dumfries yesterday and I was experimenting with camera settings and I learned something! Actually, I've learned a lot recently about my camera, and taking photos in general.
Now I thought to get this shallow depth of field I had to use the smallest aperture setting on my lense, which is 3.5. and stand as close to the plant as my autofocus would allow. The result was that the plant looked small and insignificant in the frame, and the background not as blurred as I would have liked. Then I experimented with standing back, zooming in with a larger aperture setting. This was the most successful at f/9.

Don't you just love it when you make progress?