Sunset

Summer sunsets in Fort William can be stunning

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

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...

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

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

Day Return to Mull

Rather belatedly, I guess, Ruth and I have recently discovered two things about the isle of Mull. Firstly, it's only about an hour's drive - plus a couple of ferries - from here (Fort William). And secondly, it's astonishingly dramatic in it's landscape and wildlife.

A group of 30+ cormorants were basking on a rock as the ferry from Lochaline in Morvern glided into the quay at Fishnish on Mull.

As we drove along Loch na Keal the air seemed to teem with raptors. Mostly buzzards, but there are eagles around too, and Mull has a renowned colony of white-tailed Sea Eagles. I'm gonna need to shell out on something sharper and steadier than my current Canon 100-300mm f/4-5.6 USM lens to get really useable pics of these birdies!

Last time around we started at the southern end of the island and turned along the north shore of Loch Scridain, climbing up through woods and open moorland before plunging down and round a bend to find Loch na Keal and this wide Atlantic vista opening out below us, just by the barely-discernible habitation of Balnahard:

This time we headed north from Fishnish to Salen, then cut across the isthmus to Killiechronan on the north shore of Loch na Keal. On the south shore of the loch rises the massif of Ben More, Mull's highest peak and a dominant feature of the landscape for many miles around (plainly visible from Oban, Appin, Morvern and much of the west coast of Argyll, and the islands which lie off it). Yesterday's light was weaker than on our last trip, with an early mist which had risen to hang below the clouds, and clung still to the hillsides. Not making for the easiest photographic environment, but this shot captures something of the light: