Welcome to "Man with two dogs" - the family website for dog owners and dog walkers.
This is my countryside diary which appears each Saturday in the Dundee Courier newspaper.
Photography
January 28th, 2006
I SPENT an instructive morning with outdoor photographer Niall Benvie The Doyenne and I are really rather hopeless when it comes to photography – we regularly take our camera to weddings and family events and just as regularly forget to even take it out of its case.
Niall's expertise is wildlife photography – animals, birds, plants and landscapes I learnt that there is a philosophy about taking good photographs which hadn't occurred to me Niall wants to produce an image which creates a common experience between the subject picture and the viewer, so that when the viewer looks at his photographs they recognise something from it that excites them.
This line of photography needs endless patience and perseverance and it's clear that Niall has both Log onto his website www.imagesfromtheedge.com to see what I mean.
We parked at the Brig o' Mooran on the south side of Glenesk The river tumbles between narrow, rocky shores and when there has been plenty rain beforehand it can be quite spectacular up there The bridge crosses the Burn of Mooran just before it joins the River North Esk It's quite an atmospheric part of the glen and as we looked down from the high bank a merganser flew down river.
Not long after it flew back upriver again, the dark pink flush on its breast quite prominent It flew over half a dozen canoeists who were paddling through the white water, their red and blue and yellow canoes standing out against the dark rocks.
Niall pointed out little frost-shriven plants which he identified as fairy foxgloves They are not native to Britain so must have self-seeded themselves years ago from rockeries somewhere in the glen They have dark purple flowers and flourish amongst the rocks, screes and walls where we found them.
The road finishes at Cornescorn, a solitary farmhouse sitting on a bare hillside My father told me that at the end of the Second World War he, and other members of the local Home Guard, spent many weekends up behind the farmhouse disposing of ammunition, hand grenades, mortars and other ordnance that was no longer needed It was quite surprising, he said, how hard they had to work to fire everything off!
You'll see my car sporting a British Trust for Ornithology sticker I've just joined as a Garden BirdWatch member which means I make regular returns of birds seen in the garden, which enables the Trust to build up an accurate picture of bird activity throughout the UK throughout the seasons.
The annual subscription of £12 seems good value for doing something that is worthwhile as well as fun.
It's not too late, I hope, to acknowledge the Christmas card sent on behalf of Cara, a rough collie, to Inka and Macbeth I was tempted to write wuff' collie, but I stayed my hand!