And again, just giving a sense of setting. Somehow Mike just fits these surroundings, he doesn’t just work with wood, he is utterly passionate about it; where else could he be but here.

A closer picture of Mike here, but critically folks, just for a change ignore the relaxed expression with the nice graduated light across the face, that’s the headstock of my new guitar.

And here it is, Indian Rosewood, Sitka Spruce and Mahogany, all assembled by Mike’s expert paws. I’m so excited!

Mike isn’t just a learn it and get in a rut luthier. He has made it his business to spend time in Spain studying with the spanish and flamenco guitar builders, and he has adapted many of their traditional techniques for use here in Scotland. Note the use of string and wedges where many might expect metal clamps. It’s a joy to watch this work happening.

And finally a detail of one of Mike’s near complete Classical instruments. Look at the hand finished detail round the soundhole. This is a pre-polished and finished guitar. Some lucky person will own this soon.

Mike’s workshop is pretty dark and presents a difficult photographic environment. I used a little offboard flash on occasion, and a couple with natural light only. The picture of mike holding my guitar neck was ISO 2000, and the picture of my guitar nearing completion was ISO 2500. No noise reduction was applied in Lightroom 3. You couldn’t say the Canon 7d has no noise, it has plenty at these settings, but it is surprisingly unobtrusive in real use.

There will be more pictures of Mike’s band posted soon, once I can process the next batch of challenging, low light pictures I took.

Leaving Fort William:

The rail bridge from the “soldier’s bridge” leaving Fort William with Ben Nevis behind:

It can be hard to explain why you like certain pictures, but for me the juxtaposition of what looks like ex-council housing with the mightiest mountain in Britain and Scotland fascinates. The path you walk is clearly visible on the right:

The view of Loch Linnhe from Caol near the start of the Caledonian Canal. Fort William just visible on the left:

Still on day 1 of the walk you encounter the amazing “Neptune’s staircase“. This lifts or drops boats 20 metres in 8 huge locks. It was a Thomas Telford creation:

This is typical of the Caledonian Canal between Fort William and Gairlochy where we finished day 1. Starting a 10 mile stretch at 4pm left us dangerously late for dinner:

Catherine knackered but undaunted after the first (painfully flat) 10 miles. There’s something about flat walking that shows every painful bit of your boots in a way that hillier ground doesn’t. It must be because the same part of your foot takes the same stresses every step whereas angles change all the time in hills. Anyway on-board flash used on a low setting here to counteract the growing twilight:

At the same time Gerry who hasn’t had a blister in his life was showing off his wafer thin business socks. Swine!

Day 2 now and you start immediately on Loch Lochy (unimaginative name! The loch that’s a bit lochish?). The main feature of the way makes itself apparent now. You had better ready yourself for the challenge of photographing forests, because that’s what you’ll be walking through lots of. Here’s an attempt to catch the amazing and sometimes overwhelming presence of the trees:

This trunk was just plain confused, but eventually it got the hang of “up”:

Getting out your macro lens can just bore your companions so when all three toddled off to visit some featured small church I indulged my perverse needs and started with a dandelion that must have thought it was safe from photographic molestation:

Then some Gorse:

Then a lochside primrose:

The party reunited we walked on and saw this grouse that insisted on watching us from behind thickets of  twigs. My 70-300 gave me a shallow enough depth of field to isolate it from its dense refuge. It still led me a merry dance to see even this much of it:

A moment later these tiny wallflowers distracted me. You can’t be a fast walker with a camera. I think they are blue violets; they were growing on an embankment:

Who could resist photographing this Loch Lochy scene:

Here’s Elisabeth taking day 2 in her stride with a sensible sized camera at her waist, unlike my Canon 40D on my waist:

Just as you approach the Laggan Locks at the head of the loch you see this copse of trees and a thoughtfully placed tractor for passing photographers. I owe this farmer a pint:

We were glad to see the lovely Laggan Locks and the dying light I think helped the atmosphere:

More of the locks:

With 21 miles under their belts, two tired kittens contemplating how little working life prepares you for long days on your pawsies:

Enough for now, more shortly……

First the 40D pictures: (all 17-85 f4 IS)

And now 2 from the panny: (both full 24mm wide angle)

I hope to thaw out soon.

The two things I want to highlight are that I had a major file corruption issue with a lot of my precious files over the end of 2007 and the start of 2008, in which I have lost a lot of data. (More about this in a  posting soon). So I was sad on naming this folder of otherwise uninteresting files to note the corruption that you will see in the next picture. I realised that I could clone it out because it was in easy areas of the sky to deal with. My second point is one to which I will certainly return later, not only is the picture corrupted, but it was far from a great picture in terms of exposure. Gerry and Elisabeth are slightly backlit and underexposed, perhaps exposure compensation or fill-in flash (my then 400D had no spot metering) would have helped, but I used none of them. I did take the picture in RAW file format, so look how easy it was for me a year on to:

• warm it up with the colour temp slider.
• Increase the vibrance/colour saturation
• Increase the clarity/ midrange definition
• Use a virtual grad filter on the sky to darken it
• Use a virtual grad filter on the foreground to brighten it
• Change the curves to brighten faces
• Use the spot repair tool to clone the corruption out of the sky

And all of this without going into photoshop elements even once. I love lightroom. (Corruption issue aside).

The original (I’m embarrassed to show you).

If you can use RAW format, and can be bothered with a little tweaking, you should!