Highlander's website

[Highlander]

Dear all,

In spring of this year I resigned from my job in London. I decided to take a well earned break approximately six months long, give or take. In addition to returning home to the Highlands, Scotland, to spend time hill walking and improving my photography, I decided to make a start on something I've wanted to do for quite some time now: build a website of my own. After a moderate learning curve and significant effort it is with great pleasure that I present to you www.robbuckle.co.uk

I am very interested in obtaining your honest opinion and/or constructive criticism of any aspect of the site. I intend to develop the site further in future, but intend to leave it as it stands for the time being.

Note that the site is entirely Flash based and viewing requires Flash Player version 10. If your computer does not have the latest version you can download it for free from Adobe's website here.

What say you?

 

[STRONGBADF1]

Very nice, Robbie! I see you apply a lot of work into your passions. "Ruin on the Fain..." is an awesome shot.

I don't have any criticisms but if I come up with any I'll let you know.

 

[Alex2507]

Just so you know, when you finally reach Mount Doom it will be very difficult but the ring must go in.

Very cool site!

 

[billy p]

I vaguely recall you discussing this and since you've accomplished this ...what's next? Will you later undertake traveling abroad to further enhance this website or just sticking to the local scene...which by the way looks beautiful.

Great pictures keep em coming, Bill.

 

[ErnieM]

Beauty of Scotland

Rob,
Your photos are really great! My favorites: the St. Kilda "street" scene and the Quiraing on the Isle of Skye. And the standing stones on Lewis . . . OK, it's too difficult to choose - they're all good.

Our family had the privilege of living in Scotland from late 1995 to mid 1999 while I did some advanced study at the University of Edinburgh. I must say that not only is Scotland one of the most beautiful places in the world but the people there are fantastic and friendly.

We went thinking (wrongly of course) that Scots would be reserved and cold. Well, the weather was often cold (never reserved ) but the people turned out to be very friendly. We ended up knowing every person on our street - something that is rare here in America!

Thanks for sharing your photos. They can't replace the real thing, but they can draw folk to visit the real thing!

 

[Highlander]

Thanks folks,

I see you apply a lot of work into your passions.

Thank you Doug, yes I do. When I began investigating building my own website I knew absolutely nothing about HTML, CSS or Flash, and started to wade through a prodigious (but excellent) volume on Adobe's Dreamweaver CS4. About a third of the way through I thought I'd take a breather and looked at another volume, this time on Flash CS4. From then on I was hooked.

I picked up Flash without too much difficulty and of course the internet is such a tremendous source of help in this type of circumstance too. I was able to apply what I had learned by dissecting the code of others into serving my own purpose.

Just so you know, when you finally reach Mount Doom it will be very difficult but the ring must go in. Very cool site!

Thanks Alex. I'll take a guess that you prefer the spherical panoramas on the Virtual page the most. True? For me it is the Home page images, hands down, though when I first got into stitching spherical panos I would have said they were the best thing since sliced bread.

...since you've accomplished this ...what's next? Will you later undertake traveling abroad to further enhance this website or just sticking to the local scene...which by the way looks beautiful.

Thanks Billy. You've asked a question more relevant than you perhaps thought because it appears I may effectively be forced to head abroad...to find work. I've yet to exhaust speaking to my 'contacts' in industry but thus far the 'job situation' is looking increasingly grim. However, all is not lost and, having spoken to ex-colleagues, I've been led to believe that my chances of finding work in Australia, New Zealand or possibly South Africa range from "good to very good". That said, while part of me likes the thought of working abroad, overall I would prefer to stay in the Highlands. Time will (rapidly) tell if that will be possible. Watch this space...

 

[Alex2507]

Thanks Alex. I'll take a guess that you prefer the spherical panoramas on the Virtual page the most. True?

You're like a mind reader. I like the stills too, the blurred zoom not so much as it makes me feel motion but your pic's are lots of fun to look at. The panoramas kind of make me feel like I can look around a bit.

Australians are crazy. Be careful down there.

 

[Highlander]

Thanks Ernie,

I lived in Edinburgh for a time while I studied nearby and consider it a truly beautiful city. For me, however, the Highlands will always be home. I guess I will always be a country person (even if my work almost always requires that I am based in a town/city - which I also enjoy in certain respects).

...the weather was often cold (never reserved )

Cold? Bah, softie! I know what you mean: living in London these last three years I certainly am aware of how different the weather is, just several hundred miles further north. When the weather is fine there can be few places as stunning as Scotland. It's just a pity the weather isn't better a bit more consistently.

 

[Highlander]

The panoramas kind of make me feel like I can look around a bit.

I can appreciate that. Since most visitors to the site will never witness the view firsthand it's the next best thing, except perhaps footage from a video camera - the latter of which probably weighs significantly less than my panoramic head. You wouldn't believe the weight I carry up the hills. Definitely a labour of love.

Australians are crazy. Be careful down there.

Given the option, New Zealand would be my first choice. I've yet to hear a negative review from anyone who has visited New Zealand. Then, of course, there is its relative similarity to Scotland's scenery.

 

[mike c]

bloody hell. those pictures look great!
(i especially like the standing stones)

any filters you use?

 

[Davemcc]

What a great site!!!

The panorama feature is nothing short of amazing.

 

[Highlander]

Thanks Mike,

...those pictures look great! (i especially like the standing stones)

That shot was taken just shortly before sunset. You can see from the photo that the sky was cloudy. Then, for no more than perhaps a minute, the sun (behind me) broke through and strongly lit up the stones. No filters were used.

...any filters you use?

For certain images, yes, though I'll often take a shot with and without a filter and compare and contrast when I get home. Examples:

1. The Quiraing was taken with and without a Graduated ND filter, but while I preferred the photo with the filter because of the sky's exposure being held back, in the end the photo that appears on the Home page is the image without the filter, because overall I didn't like the darkening it applied to the higher ground on the right;

2. The following shot of Boreray, St. Kilda has an 'electronic' filter applied by computer to it to render the image as if it had been taken using Fuji Velvia film stock. Consequently green is exaggerated. Normally I would be reluctant to have an image appear differently than it did to my eye, but with this shot I had deliberately set out to zoom the lens to create a less formal, more artistic (?) image, so in this instance I was comfortable with the change;

3. The waterfall shot has, by necessity, a large ND filter applied so as to extend exposure time to obtain the 'silky' water effect;

4. A polariser is generally used for 'normal' daytime shots, though not with the 14-24mm lens as it cannot accept a polarizer (and with the lens being an extreme wide angle you generally wouldn't want to anyway, where sky featured in the image). Perhaps surprisingly a polariser is not used for any of the sunrise/sunset shots. At such times, with the sun being close to (or below) the horizon and light level low, a polarizer makes little to no difference to the image.

Cheers,

 

[Highlander]

Thank you Dave,

The panorama feature is nothing short of amazing.

I've attached a photo of my camera, panoramic head and tripod that are used to take a series of photos for spherical panoramas. The head's principal aim is to eliminate parallax error but it also serves to maximise image sharpness by preventing camera movement during capture. The head allows the camera to be rotated in selectable angular steps both in plan and vertically.

For those interested, spherical panoramas are formed by taking a series of images, normally shot with the camera in portrait orientation, with a suitable overlap (typically a quarter to a third of the image width). For my camera body and lens I would need to shoot a minimum of 2 rows of 8 images plus an up shot (zenith) and down shot (nadir) for a full spherical panorama.

The nadir is problematic because of course it features the tripod and in a truly full spherical panorama the tripod isn't visible and viewing is akin to floating in the centre of a hollow sphere, looking outwards (the image you see is the surface of the sphere). Therefore, if a nadir is to be included (I don't bother with them - see below) the photographer will generally shoot all the shots on the head, then move the tripod out the way and shoot the nadir hand-held.

Back at the computer the images are fed into a stitching application that, if set to stitch automatically (I manually stitch for best results) analyses each image pair and builds up a number of Control Points, i.e. it notes the pixel coordinates of matching features of adjacent (overlapping) images. From this information the program is able to warp each image so that it theoretically overlaps exactly with its neighbours. The individual images are then blended into one another and output as a single overall image of, effectively, an 'unwrapped' sphere's surface.

From here the pano is fed into image editing software like Photoshop (I use Capture NX2) and adjusted to suit (i.e. sharpened etc) before being saved.

Once more the image is fed into an application, this time Pano2VR, which takes the flat spherical panorama image, wraps it into a sphere and outputs as either a Flash or Quicktime interactive 'movie'. This is the file you are manipulating on my website. In essence you have loaded a Flash movie into my (Flash movie itself) website. Simple huh?

Actually it's not as bad as it probably sounds. The greatest headache for me is out in the field. I don't include a nadir because my panos are HDR panos and this complicates the 'hand holding' part of taking the nadir shot. Even without a nadir, I have the difficulty of 'hiding' the shadow cast by the tripod, pano head and camera, which can be very long indeed, to contend with. Generally the solution is to:

1. Hide the shadow cast by my camera gear in a shadow cast by nearby rocks/cairn etc;

2. Setup the camera next to a cliff or significant drop so that the shadow cast by my gear 'falls' off the edge;

3. Wait until a (ideally small) cloud passes between the sun and my camera gear so that locally I am in shadow and my own shadow is erased.

I find option 2 to be the preferred option because it also tends to result in impressive views when looking downward when navigating the finished pano.

 

[ErnieM]

Thanks Ernie,

I lived in Edinburgh for a time while I studied nearby and consider it a truly beautiful city. For me, however, the Highlands will always be home. I guess I will always be a country person (even if my work almost always requires that I am based in a town/city - which I also enjoy in certain respects).



Cold? Bah, softie! I know what you mean: living in London these last three years I certainly am aware of how different the weather is, just several hundred miles further north. When the weather is fine there can be few places as stunning as Scotland. It's just a pity the weather isn't better a bit more consistently.

Yes, we loved Edinburgh, but we also really loved our very limited (sadly) times in the Highlands.

Possibly the Scottish weather impacted us so much because we had been living previously in Asia, near the Equator !

 

[Rogozhin]

FANTASTIC work!

 

[darien87]

Nice pics!

I was wondering why The Cliffs, Hirta, St. Kilda was blurry, then I noticed the Ram's head.

 

[jamie2112]

I love the shots great job!!!!!

 

[Highlander]

Thanks Darien,

I was wondering why The Cliffs, Hirta, St. Kilda was blurry, then I noticed the Ram's head.

I did wonder if that would tend to occur.

That shot was taken on the 1st day I arrived on St. Kilda (I was there for about a week in the end). I spotted the opportunity for a shot with a foreground feature (the ram) in focus and the background out of focus, and crept slowly towards the ram. It spotted me and turned to look. I froze, then turned as if to move away again. After a few seconds I looked and it had gone back to thinking about whatever it is that rams think about and I took the photo. Wanting to get a bit closer I crept forward again but the ram had decided that enough was enough, got up, and sauntered off.

I was lucky I took the shot when I did as an 'insurance shot' so to speak, though if I could go back and re-take the photo I would not have the cliffs quite as blurred as they currently are. On more than one occasion I have rushed to set up the tripod etc only to find that by the time I have the moment has passed. I am slowly learning.

Cheers,

 

[Highlander]

I love the shots great job!!!!!

Thanks Jamie. I have to say I love your avatar. It makes me giggle every time I see it.

Cheers,