Stirton Productions and Beyond

Interlude 3.

I got an email from my mate Duncan (Aktoman) last Friday about a minute before I left work. 'I'm going up Bennachie (hill near Aberdeen) to try new camera, coming?' What can you say to that?

I was knackered after a long day staring at a screen and was thinking of crawling into a cupboard and dying, but I went along instead. For the first time in a week it wasn't raining so we wandered up the hill in a leisurely fashion- Bennachie isn't a very demanding walk at 375 metres (about 1230 feet) but it has some steep parts so we had a few breaks to get our breath back and take photos.

The hill itself has several peaks but we were heading for the one known as 'mither tap,' which has a natural rocky plinth with the remains of 2 ancient stone forts surrounding it. One of the stone barricades is comprised of fused stone, not a bad job considering the picts didn't have plasma furnaces or crazy glue. The hill is one of the most probable sites for the Roman battle of Mons Graupius (84AD approx.) - where 10.000 hairy arsed Scotsmen led by the war leader, Calgacus showed the Romans what they were made of , literally, by being wiped out by about 30.000 trained combat troops and cavalry. It did however show the Romans that the Scots were way too mental to try and rule over. Yay us.

It was sunny but pretty windy so we could only manage F stops below 5.6 at 100 asa which for landscape photos is a bit flat, but without a tripod it was our best option as the wind was chucking us about like rubber kittens. Duncan's new cam is a canon 350D, it's a good entry level digital SLR and it has a nice lens. As he's never used one before I was helping him out with some basic tips and settings, he does have a good eye for composition though so that helps heaps.

Here are some photos which we took, I think my ones are the long shot of the top of the hill and the Lord of the Rings one of the valley below (yup, the clouds are real). They are a bit soft due to lack of tripod but not too bad.