Sunset

Summer sunsets in Fort William can be stunning

Took this from the bedroom window at10.20pm last night

2007/8 : A Winter Retrospective - Part 1

Laid up through most of January with a busted rib or three, I didn't get much photography done, but here area a few shots that show some of the delights that winter can bring to Lochaber:

Driving snow in Glen Nevis

It often is on winter afternoons that the light is at its best for photographing the highland landscape. The low sun casts long horizontal shadows and somehow the colours - more muted in some respects than the greens of spring or summer - seem more vivid than at any other time of year. The three shots which follow were taken while driving home from the RSPB Insh Marshes wetland centre near Kingussie. Taken over an hour or so and I guess about 30-some miles, they show how the light develops as the sunset progresses

Ruthven Barracks as the sun goes down

This reminds me I must get more shots of Loch Laggan...

Loch Laggan

...whose water level is at its maximum here, as can be seen at the dam at its western end, which supplies electricity to the National Grid as well as the Fort William aluminium smelter

Laggan Dam

Just another Highland Sunset

I wasn't ready for the otter as we strolled down Mallaig harbour yesterday afternoon. I sensed a decent sunset in the offing, and hadn't taken my camera out of its case when I caught out of the corner of my eye what I took for a small seal. But it wasn't. It was my first encounter with the almost-tame otters that have been hanging out the quayside at Mallaig this year. Ruth had seen one before there, and recognised it at once. By the time I'd got the camera out it had stopped staring up at us, dived and swum away. When it re-surfaced, it was a bit too far away for my EF-S 17-85mm lens. So this was all I got...














Then it was onwards, chasing the setting sun...
Firstly in Mallaig, with the sun setting by Eigg













Then down the coast to Morar bay...













Then finally to Traigh, just north of Arisaig.

Best sunset we've seen here since our honeymoon in December 2000.














Winter is the season for West Highland sunsets. Not least because they happen in the afternoon when you're out and about and can just bump into them