This was all we saw of Buachaille Etive Mor...

... as a blizzard descended on our way back to Fort William. No less imposing for the fact you can barely see it!

Return of the Winter - Today on Rannoch Moor

First stop Ballachulish - 2 goldfinches sighted as I was setting up this shot. Bird book says they don't come to these parts...

Bit of a cliché this shot. Black Rock Cottage and the Buachaille Etive Mor. Unmissable, though, on a day like this. And only one other photographer active at the time!! That would change as we headed down to Lochan na h-Achlaise and the Block Mount Bens...

Still, I think I was the only one that bothered to take a shot of these snow-encrusted trees.

And here we are at the Lochan. Stunning cloud formations - you can tell it's still snowing up there even though we're in bright sunshine. Good day, though the breeze precluded any good reflection shots today

Met this fellow just where the road turns down towards Loch Tulla. Frequent visitors to these pages (if there are any) may recognise him from an earlier post on December 4th last year. He was also on our 2007 Xmas card to select acquaintances. Fine chap. Good to see him again.



And again, stunning skies above Loch Tulla...

Winter Retrospective : Part Two

Shock 'n' Awe in Glenfinnan

I've been trying for a shot of one of these guys for a while, but they're not easy to capture: kind of sneak up and over you. Fortunately this time I had the camera in my hand, switched on, and set - approximately - appropriately. 

Gotcha! Well, nearly...

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

Now for a little Catch-Up

The week before Christmas was a stunner in the Fort William micro-climate, with six consecutive bright sunny days and six successive frosty nights. Temperature didn't rise above -3ºC that week, but your photographer fell on his EOS 400D on day four and bust a rib or two, thus not as much captured as might have been.
Here's a few taster shots from the Great Glen taken that week. There'll be prints of some of these available at lochaberphoto.co.uk soon.

Loch Lochy

Glen Spean

...near Tomacharich on the Highbridge road...

As I've said before - summer is not the best time to visit these parts. On winter days like these, when the sun is low in the sky all day long, there's really nowhere to beat the Highlands

Intersecting Planes

A big, big Happy New Year to all who stumble upon this page!



Such was the view from here at Glenalbyn at 3.15 pm yesterday - New Years Day 2008. Not the brightest, but not lacking a certain enchantment...

Rannoch Moor

Wanted a picture of the "Lochaber Tree" for a book I'm working on, so yesterday Ruth and I headed out on a bright winter afternoon to the wastes of Rannoch Moor. Arrived too late for the best of the light at the Black Mount, but got some reasonable shots of the tree - Ruth driving slowly and me in the passenger seat with lens out the window.
The Lochaber Tree is a particularly determined rowan (I think) which has sprouted from an erratic boulder on the moor, just south of the county border that separates Lochaber ( and Highland) from Argyll & Bute. It's a better way-marker than the council's signage, and passing it coming north means we're entering home turf...


The real hit of the day was a liitle further south, though, at the lay-by above Loch Tulla, where this guy














and a couple of his friends have established a close relationship with the chap who runs a burger & tea stand.