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 to plan anything too far away from shelter. The grey skies did mean it was ideal for photographing water though.

This was another location that I’d visited on previous trips to Scotland and was keen to photograph again as I was disappointed with my previous results. This meant that I already knew what to expect when we arrived in Killin. The Falls of Dochart aren’t 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 the Falls of Dochart, 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 disappointing image below and even this image is only one side of the whole cascade.

I didn’t fare 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 agreed that we would return again later in the week.

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

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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