Sadly our trip required significant sacrifices, one of them was a thorough exploration of Skye, we are not hikers and we are not fans of crowds, and Skye tends to be best explored on foot and July/August is always going to be crowded. We chose to see Dunvegan Castle after the ferry then take a leisurely drive through Skye to Kyle of Lochalsh where our Hotel was. Sometimes, you just have to accept that you cannot see everything. Dunvegan Castle and the Fairy Flag that is housed there play a large part in one book of my favorite fantasy series "The Adept" by Katherine Kurtz. I had read the series before going to school in Aberdeen back in '96 and made it a part of my travels to see some of the settings. Fyvie Castle that was our first stop in Scotland was one, Dunvegan Castle was another, along with Urquhart Castle. I went with a group of my classmates and while I enjoyed it,  they did not linger as I am wont to to take it in. I also had badly sprained my ankle at Braemar Castle earlier in the trip and was gimpy. It was lovely the second time around and truly enjoyable both inside and out.

So, of course the first picture is... a bust inside the castle. Mainly because I just loved the light and shadow. Now, I will accept the blame for not taking more pictures of the inside of the castles. I feel awkward taking pictures when the other tourists are in the photo and while the interiors ARE cool, they just don't seem to be as photogenic as I want them to be. The exteriors are where I get my fun shots.

The Castle sits on the water, and I believe that the MacLeods were pirates as most of the coastal clans were wont to be, this would make an ideal base for pirating. Now, the flowers were beautiful and the grounds well tended though maybe a little more rustic than other places, but I AM a sucker for flowers and plants with water droplets on them.   

The first time I saw one of these trees was here at Dunvegan, they are called Monkey Puzzle Trees. I don't know the origin of the name, but I really like how they look. Really wish they would grow in Utah.   

Technical Tidbit: To blur water you need a slow shutter speed to allow the water to move while the shutter is open. Trouble is, you also move and if your shutter speed is too slow without a tripod or other support everything is blurry. I think I did OK with this.

Perched on the edge of a small cliff, I think this was a quite defensible location I don't know the history but I am sure there has been a fortified something here for many years before even this castle was built.   

Skipping ahead to the next day, we were tired and slept in, Eilean Donan Castle had been on our radar, but was actually booked out as far as tours go that morning and not to dump on them, but the bulk of the castle was rebuilt in the early 1900's and is not all that historic. It IS what comes to mind when you think Scottish Castle though, as it have been photographed so many times and was used in the the original movie "The Highlander". We were happy to drive by the PACKED parking lot and get on our way, we had a LONG day ahead to our B&B a few miles south of Edinburgh. Side note here, we re-did our hotel for the last week on the fly. We had been booked into a hotel in downtown Glasgow and my lovely smart wife realized that the parking and getting around were going to be hideous, so we found a B&B that turned out to be stellar for several nights then another cute guest house on the coast in Irvine. BUT, that added almost an hour of drive time to a long day into the Glasgow/Edinburgh area from Skye via Inveraray Castle, which was worth it, but golly I was tired of driving!   

The drive WAS spectacular though, the glens and mountains were breathtaking.  

We arrived at Inveraray Castle in the mid afternoon, you do have to book your time and place ahead of time, which requires you to definitely plan ahead for drive times and such. But the stress was worth it, I had driven here planning to tour the castle during my last trip before ending my 2 years in Scotland but was delayed and got there just after it closed. Due to this I was bound and determined to see it this time. I know that the lords that built and owned this castle had done some quite underhanded things to their tenants (Look up the highland clearances, and other acts of the Dukes of Argyll if you want to) I find I have to look past that to be able to enjoy visiting castles like this and Dunrobin. This castle IS impressive too, I found myself actually taking more interior pictures of this castle than pretty much all of the rest of the ones we toured. On a technical note, this was the first time I forgot to turn my ISO down after going outside, the photo still is fine unless you look really closely and see there is a smidge of noise. But, you need to remember as a photographer to keep an eye on those types of things. I'm glad I noticed it and didn't ruin any photos, it isn't like I could go back any time I want.   

They built and decorated these places to impress and impress they do, the sheer ornateness really does progress to near outlandishness at times even becoming outlandish truth be told, but that was the times.   

The conical roofs on the towers are, to my understanding, what they looked like originally, adding a little bit of fairy tale to the building certainly. Not that I want you to look too closely, but if you compare the photo above to the photo below, you will see another example of perspective and adjusting for this when processing the photo. I did not correct for it in the top photo, which is why it looks distorted. Your eyes and perceptions automatically correct for this when standing close to a tall building and you don't notice it much, but the camera captures only what is there, modified by the lens and where the photographer stands. In the bottom photo I took time to correct the effect so that the walls that are indeed vertical, look vertical. I never really noticed this until I got more into photography, it is hard for me to forget now.   

I think at times you need to find balance in all that you do. I did struggle at times to chose which photos to process and which to not. I needed to keep the urge to fiddle with each image to make it PERFECT rather than good enough tamped down and simply have it be "good enough". This is harder than you might think for me. I took THOUSANDS of images and simply don't have the time to mess with all of them, nor should I, my keeper rate in regular life is maybe 1 in 10 or so. I had to loosen that a little for this, but it still took me MONTHS to get things gone through and ready to start blogging. If I am lucky I will finish yakking about my trip about a year after we left in mid July. That is a big investment in time, purely for my entertainment. I am hoping to entertain and or inform anybody who runs across this blog but, no offense, I'm not doing it for you. It is a labor of love for me really, to help cement the memories of this once in a lifetime trip. As always, I do hope you enjoyed reading my post and please feel free to comment.