Birks of Aberfeldy

Sometimes an old poem is what puts a photographic subject on your radar. That was certainly the case for me when I came across these lines from “The Birks of Aberfeldy” by Scotland’s great poet, Robert Burns:

The hoary cliffs are crown’d wi’ flowers,
White o’er the linns the burnie pours,
And rising, weets wi’ misty showers
The Birks of Aberfeldy.

Full of anticipation for a waterfall plunging deep into a glen, I visited the Birks of Aberfeldy last October. Autumn is the perfect time to visit Perthshire, as the dense forests of “Big Tree Country” then put on a display of vivid colour. The conditions were ideal, all the more so because it had rained the night before – something any waterfall can only benefit from.

The waterfall itself turned out to be something of a mixed affair. The tallest fall in the gorge can only be seen and photographed from a considerable distance, which was not quite what I had been hoping for. The lower part of the gorge, however, more than made up for it. Down there, the water carves its way along the slopes, and one cascade tumbles into the next. What you can get in front of the camera here is enough to make any landscape photographer’s heart beat faster. Burns was absolutely right in his lyrical tribute to the beauty of the gorge: the Birks of Aberfeldy is a photography location like a poem.