I’ve recently added a Gallery to the Wild Vista blog. There are three collections of photos available initially — images from Scotland, New Zealand and Antarctica. I’ll continue to add my favourite pics in time, and hope that they provide some inspiration for your own trips, treks and travels.

To see the Gallery, you can use this link, or the Gallery item on the menu above. Comments on the collections or individual photos are welcome. To comment on a specific photo, you’ll need to click Show Details once you’ve selected the photo.

Enjoy!

The new Gallery on Wild Vista.

Now, I’m really not a morning person (and this isn’t the first time I’ve admitted so on this blog), so the evening golden hour was my target today. I can see enough of the western sky and surrounding landscape from my kitchen window to get a rough feel for what photographic opportunities might prevail, and so it was that I left Buxton at a quarter-to-seven this evening, for the 20-minute drive over to Hayfield.

By the time I’d parked at the Bowden Bridge car park and stomped my way over to Kinder Reservoir, it was clear that I needed to up the pace a bit if I was to get up onto Kinder Scout in time for that precious golden light. In the end, I was probably a little late (and knackered — I stopped probably 100 vertical feet short of the Kinder plateau), but was treated to an interesting sunset over Manchester.

So, some pics…

Kinder Reservoir.

South Head from near Sandy Heys on Kinder Scout.

First quarter was at 19:19 according to my ephemeris (40 minutes before I took this photo).

It's all systems go again in UK airspace, now Eyjafjallajökull's emissions have been deemed benign.

Beetham Tower's easy to pick out in a distant Greater Manchester.

...and so the golden hour draws to a close.

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Adobe Lightroom has a frustrating flaw when used on devices with limited vertical screen resolution. Most of today’s netbook computers fall into this category, typically having only 600 pixels to play with from top to bottom.

The Problem

The problem manifests itself quite early in the Lightroom workflow. The contents of the Import dialog may be cut-off some way from the bottom, as shown below:

Lightroom Import dialog with missing controls

The dialog box cannot be moved or resized in any way that enables the missing parts of the form to be revealed. This is frustrating to say the least. The usual methods don’t work (e.g. trying to grab the edges or corners of the dialog, and dragging to resize; right-clicking the title bar and selecting Move). Initially, there seems to be no way to access the hidden controls (including the all important Import button!).

The Solution

If you set the vertical resolution to a value that’s greater than the native resolution supported by your screen (for example, to 1024x768 instead of 1024x600), Windows XP will display a scrollable “virtual” desktop, enabling you to access the full Import dialog.

Follow the steps below to change your screen’s vertical resolution, and work effectively with Lightroom using a virtual desktop.

Note that this procedure will affect all applications running on your Windows XP computer — not just Lightroom. Instructions for reversing this change are given at the end of the procedure.

1. Right-click on a blank area of your desktop, and select Properties from the context menu.

   The Display Properties dialog is shown.

2. Select the Settings tab, then click Advanced.

   A new dialog is displayed.



3. Select the Monitor tab, then clear the Hide modes that this monitor cannot display check box.

   

   The text beneath the check box hints at possible dire consequences (damaged hardware) if you go on to select an unsupported display mode. This is highly unlikely to happen with today’s monitors (LCD or CRT), and was really only ever an issue with older fixed-sync CRT screens.

4. Click Apply, then click OK.

   The dialog closes, revealing the Display Properties dialog again.

5. On the Settings tab, drag the Screen resolution slider to the right to select a screen resolution that has a vertical resolution of 768 or more. (The second figure shown beneath the slider is the vertical resolution.)

   Screen resolutions get larger as you drag the slider further to the right. You should stop at the first resolution that has the required 768 or more vertical pixels.

   

6. Click OK.

   The Display Properties dialog closes, and your desktop should now be displaying a higher vertical resolution.

   To see the “extra” bits of the desktop, move your mouse pointer to the top or bottom edge of the screen, which will then automatically scroll up or down.

   Now, when you use Lightroom, you will be able to access every part of the Import dialog.

To reverse any changes you make to your screen resolution, repeat the above procedure, setting the screen resolution back to its original values in step 5.

The key lies in the Earth’s atmosphere. This scatters light, and so, given sufficient depth, is quite capable of revealing the boundary between day and night (technically, the “terminator“). The Earth’s shadow can be seen rising in the east, shortly after sunset — or descending in the west, shortly before sunrise. The sky must be clear, and a low horizon also helps. These conditions are not at all uncommon. Although most noticeable when away from towns and cities (flat countryside, or vantage points high in the mountains are particularly good), you can pick out the Earth’s shadow frequently once you’ve learned to recognise it. It was from the Refuge de la Vallete, in the Vanoise Alps, that I last photographed the shadow:

The Earth's shadow — descending in the west, at sunrise.

The dark line just above the mountains (and dipping behind the twin peak on the left) is the terminator, the division between night and day. The full moon is visible at the top of the photo. The colouring in the sky at this, the start or end of twilight, is quite subtle, beautiful, and subject to surprisingly rapid change.

The geometry of what’s going on here is much more easily explained with a diagram. Fortunately, I don’t have to try bashing out a second-rate illustration with Microsoft Paint, as the wonderful Causes of Color website has done all the hard work already (and way better than I could manage). Be sure to check out the second image on this page, which shows how the Earth’s shadow appears at different times as you move your mouse over the time labels.

Next in this series on atmospheric optics (I’ve got to justify creating a separate category for such articles now!) — supernumerary rainbows…

In addition to landscape photography, I’m particularly interested in meteorology, and within that vast field, atmospheric optics. A well known (though comparatively rare) effect, is the Brocken Spectre, and associated glory. I’ve been lucky enough to see Brocken Spectres on three or four occasions, though have yet to get a half-decent photograph.

The range of optical phenomena visible in the atmosphere over time is huge. From the common (no nonetheless beautiful) fiery sunset, through rainbows and haloes, to rarities such as noctilucent clouds, and the fleeting green flash — there’s a great deal to learn about and subsequently observe.

To anyone with even a passing interest in this area, I can heartily recommend M. Minnaert’s “Light and Color in the Outdoors” (Amazon link). This classic text explaining nature’s multifarious optical displays isn’t always easy going, but is continually interesting, well illustrated throughout with line drawings, and supplemented by some stunning colour photographs.

Online, the best resource I’ve found is Atmospheric Optics at http://www.atoptics.co.uk/. There are many other sites on the subject available, often illustrated with spectacular photography.

To finish this post, here’s a photo of a fairly common phenomenon — a sun dog (also called a “mock sun”, or, technically, a parhelion).

Parhelion or sun dog, South East Essex, UK.

I reckon on seeing five or six of these a year, though they’re undoubtedly visible much more frequently, if only we’d notice!

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My first two trips to this area couldn’t have been more different. Both involved an ascent of Beinn Dorain (with the addition of Beinn an Dòthaidh the second time), using the same route from Bridge of Orchy, but in wildly differing conditions. Here’s a summit photo from each day:

Summit photo, Beinn Dorain, February 1994.

Summit photo, Beinn Dorain, April 2002.

In February ‘94, the final pull up onto the summit ridge was through a full-on blizzard. Careful map-and-compass work and not a little determination led to the cairn in near white-out conditions. Fun, of a sort, but it hardly made for a relaxing day on the hill.

Eight years later, and the same route yielded a pleasant bimble up late spring snow in the sunshine, and expansive views from this singular summit. Reversing this bit of the route and tacking on Beinn an Dòthaidh, we were treated to an extensive display of crepuscular rays, projected through a layer Altocumulus.

Crepuscular rays over Beinn Dorain (from Beinn an Dòthaidh).

And this year’s trip to the Bridge of Orchy Hills? Well, this time the itinerary started a few miles north of Bridge, at Achaladair Farm. Beinn Achaladair and Beinn a’ Chreachain in combination give a very fine day on the hills indeed. Not that it’s easy. And the weather was pretty ropey too. I was all for calling it a day after Beinn Achaladair, and returning to the car at the farm while my companions continued, but they were having none of it.

Fortuitously, shortly after leaving Achaladair’s rocky summit ridge, I got the fillip I needed as the clouds parted to reveal the vast, lochan-studded expanse of Rannoch Moor. The steep profile of The Buachaille, and a distant Loch Ericht were pretty much all I could reliably identify in this expansive vista.

Rannoch Moor from Beinn Achaladair.

Aching legs were easily forgotten now, and, despite a quickly noticed navigational error leaving the top of Beinn a’ Chreachain (the old “180° off” malarkey — must remember; red end of the compass needle points to magnetic north — I was having a bad day!), the remainder of the day was uneventful.

Now, having seen Rannoch Moor from this vantage point for the first time, I really want to get out there and explore more extensively. A brief incursion from the A82 to a cracking little lochan on a fishing trip some years back has been pretty much it so far. Something else to add to the list…

Thus far, issues have been relatively minor, and resolvable without too much drama. Adobe’s support centre combines decent product documentation with community sourced tips and comments, so it’s almost always been easy to find an answer to my questions without having to kick off an extended internet trawl.

The stumbling block is actually a consequence of a couple of other recent purchases — a Samsung N110 Netbook, and a wireless router/ADSL modem. Now that I’m a two-computer household (despite having taken to the wireless netbook to the extent that I’ve pretty much abandoned the clunky desktop PC), there’s the new joy of synchronising work, and sharing resources between the two machines.

Having installed Lightroom on the netbook, I thought it would be straightforward to attach a removable hard drive (containing my image archive and Lightroom catalog) to the wireless router, and fire up Lightroom. With the removable drive listed as a network drive in Explorer on the netbook, I did just this. Problem is, when I pointed Lightroom at the network-drive catalog, I was presented with:

Lightroom won't play with remote catalogs

Bugger.

Thing is, this shouldn’t really have come as a great surprise. While researching Lightroom prior to buying it (this is by far the most I’ve ever spent personally on a piece of software), I recall coming across a few blog and forum posts that bemoaned Lightroom’s shortcomings when it comes to networking. As it happened, these comments were generally written from the perspective of professional photographers with multi-user requirements that I simply don’t have. So I ignored them.

The irritating thing is, I don’t want to access the same catalog from two machines simultaneously. Ever. There’s only one of me, and I’m not going to start Lightroom on both machines. What I would find useful, is the ability to work from either my netbook, or my desktop, and not have to mess about keeping two copies of the catalog in sync.

I found a brief note of explanation as to why Lightroom may behave in this way. Apparently, the catalog uses the open source SQLite database, which doesn’t have multi-user capabilities, hence the lockdown on shared drive access. It would, I have to say, be a lot more convenient if access via a network drive was allowed, and only subsequently prevented if the catalog/database file was already in use and locked.

Ho hum. The answer for now has simply been to take a copy of the catalog for use on my netbook (at only 70MB, this is no great chore). This works fine, but begs further questions:

• How should I go about synchronising/combining the catalog files on the two machines? I’m particularly concerned that I don’t lose metadata or change history for individual images.
• What’s the best way to handle pre-built preview images? These are stored outside the main catalog file, and should probably be copied too to save having to rebuild them all?

I think before I get stuck in to the Adobe Lightroom support centre, I really need to clarify exactly how I want to work — at least then I’ll be able to ask the right questions!