The mindless ramblings of a bow shooting network engineer.
Scotland 2019 – Falls of Dochart

Scotland 2019 – Falls of Dochart

After our trip to Bracklinn Falls in the morning, we grabbed some lunch in Callendar and decided to head to Killin and the Falls of Dochart. The weather still wasn’t particularly great, occasional downpours made it difficult plan anything too far away from shelter. The grey skies did mean it was ideal for photographing water though.

Again, this was a location that I’d visited on previous trips to Scotland so I knew what to expect. The Falls of Dochart arent exactly a waterfall in the typical sense, but a series of small cascades where the river Dochart narrows and passes over a rocky bed.

On my last attempt at photographing these falls, I struggled to find a good composition. Part of the problem is that these falls are vast and at first it can seem overwhelming. My initial reaction was to try and fit the whole scene in to one frame. This resulted in the rather disappointing image below and even this image is only one side of the whole cascade.

Trying to capture the whole of the falls

I didn’t fair much better on this visit. I was still struggling to find a composition I was happy with that conveyed the scale of the falls. I wandered around the rocks for a while but the weather was getting progressively worse, and as I had Kay and the dogs with me I didn’t want to make them wait around in the rain. I decided to call it a day and decided to return again later in the week.

I returned a few days later and as we arrived a thunder and lightening storm rolled in. We decided to grab a bite to eat and wait it out, Kay really isn’t a big fan of lightening (and that’s a massive understatement). After an hour or so, the rain lifted and the sun started to break through.

Again, I spent some time looking around the rocky banks of the river trying to find a composition I was happy with and eventually settled on one of the main flows that lead under the bridge. The sun breaking through the cloud brought me another issue to deal with. It began to cause severe reflections from the water surface making the highlights in the scene hard to control. I took a couple more shots and decided to look for some compositions away from the harsh light.

I did find a couple of locations out of the direct sunlight and focussed on some of the more minute details of the area as well. I managed to grab some images that weren’t too disappointing. I’ve included some of them below.

Thanks for stopping by, have a good one!

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