After our trip to Skye we had a family stop scheduled in Dunkeld, my mum had arranged for a family gathering to celebrate my dad turning another year older. Admittedly it was slightly more special than your average birthday, my dad turned 80 in October.

With quite a few photos to sort through from Skye the one thing that was notably absent from them was photos with an autumnal feel. Now, while Skye has trees they are still few and far between so the colours are a little more muted as it's the moors and bracken that give the landscape its colours.

In stark contrast to the mountains of Skye are the banks of the Tay, the house that had been rented for the weekend sits on the north bank of the river just a few minutes walk east of Dunkeld itself. With autumn in full colour by this point, being the end of October, the tree-lined banks were a riot of colours - bright against the deep, dark waters of the river as it slowly flowed past the house.

I woke early on the Sunday morning and with the sun still to appear I wandered off along the banks of the Tay to see what I could root out of the location with my camera. My initial plan was to head toward Dunkled, so up river, and then work my way back through the gardens of the house heading down river.

On my venture along the river the sun wasn't quite lighting the surrounding countryside, it was daylight but it lacked any depth as most of the river was still in shadow and therefore the colours were still quite muted. I found a spot and sat quietly as the low cloud started to burn off the hillside in front of me, listening to the sounds of nature around me. The odd salmon breaking the waters surface looking for an early morning feed, the splash and swirl slowly dying away as the current swept the ripples down stream.

As the morning wore on the sun came out of hiding behind the trees and hills casting long shafts of light through the tree tops and giving life to the colours.

With the sun now up and starting to lose that early morning glow I headed back to my first vantage point looking at the bridge in Dunkeld.

Later in the day Anna, Seb and I drove the short distance (just across the A9 in fact) to The Hermitage. I had previously seen photos from this area and since we were so close it seemed a shame not to visit. It was quite late in the afternoon when we were wandering the forest so the light was already starting to fade.

It was rather busy with late season tourists and quite a few photographers out to capture the falls with the autumn colours. As we wandered I dismissed the main falls, too busy and I felt there wasn't that much interest even though the river was in what appeared to be full spate. Further upstream, and after a rather slippy clamber over some rocks I managed to gain the view point you see in the next two photos - a smaller set of rapids, with the afternoon light filtering through the trees caught my attention. The colours of the fallen leaves contrasting against the dark, damp rocks as the water flows past on its journey to the Tay.