Skip to main content

Killing Time

Jim on hill near a loch, he is the orange dot. (cell phone)

Today started with the same unexciting buffet breakfast, then packing up to leave Orkney.  The weather this morning decided it was going to be traditional Scottish weather (cloudy, dreary, windy and rainy) this morning so I needed my raincoat and glove liners. Our original goal was to go see the Mayshow chambered cairn, but it by tour only and the only tours available were the 12:00, 15:00 and 16:00 which would not work out with the ferry schedule.  So we drove around Orkney to the Orphir Circle Church ruin, which was smaller than I expected.  It was quarter of a domed structure.  From there we headed to the Tomb of the Eagles which is has a bronze age and mesolithic site at the southern tip of the main Orkney Island.  Once you arrive at the parking area for the site you walk along a mile loop trail along the cliff edge.  The bronze age site was first, it was small compared to the other we have seen. They speculated that the site was used for making hot water.  The second site was the mesolithic tomb where they found several artifacts and eagle talons.  To get into the tomb you had to pull your self in using a creeper and rope system. So you would lay down on the creeper and pull yourself in with the rope then stand up in the tomb pushing the creeper out to the next person to use.  You reversed the process exit the tomb.  After that it was off to lunch.

We had lunch at a cafe located about a quarter mile up the road from the tomb site.  The cafe was situated on the cliff edge overlooking the Pentland Firth.  It was also the location of the Tomb of the Otters, which we did not see.  From there we traveled back into Kirkwall so Bill and Jim could stop at the Scapa distillery.  Apparently, Scapa Scotch cannot be found in the US.  From there it was over the St. Margaret's Hope ferry terminal to wait for our ferry to take us back to mainland Scotland.


The ferry crossing was unexciting. We did not see any sea life, except birds. Our B&B is nice, with very large rooms.  Tomorrow we head along the coast to Ullapool.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot .     I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool     The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos.  I started with a fashion grey seam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May.   This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot.   The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice   The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature.  I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric.  To that I added two flower pot hol...
Post a Comment
Read more