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.

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

Out to Lunch

Just another lazy Highland Sunday...
A short drive from here to Oban for a decent seafood lunch at "Ee-usk!"







Swans in Oban harbour





"Ee-usk" (Gaelic for fish) sits on the town's North Pier, with superb views over the harbour and Oban bay






Looking over Oban bay to the isles of Kerrera and Mull




...and a surprise sunset over Loch Linnhe and the Mull bens from Benderloch on the road back home












... all in all not a bad place to abide...