Landscape photography from lochinver, north west highlands, scotland january 2024
In the days before my trip to Scotland in January 2024 it was starting to look more and more like winter was going to treat us with a cold spell and lots of snow. When it finally came to travel day there was snow over the peaks as I was coming into land in Inverness airport. Driving then out to the North West coast towards Ullapool and our final destination for the week Lochinver there was a fair bit of the white stuff and we were greeted by frozen lochs.
Alas; that was the last day of the cold weather and the remainder of the week was a healthy mixture of rain, sunshine, wind and hail and by morning on the first day the snow and ice had all but melted.
The cottage we were staying in was beautifully perched on the side of a loch with beautiful panoramic views.
The cottage we were staying in was perched on the side of a loch with beautiful panoramic views all around shown in the picture above.
Lochinver is a wonderful place surrounded by big mountains and we had a nice mixed week of landscape photography, walks to a waterfall and a hike upto the top of Stac Pollaidh one of the peaks featured in some of my images.
Having not really done any landscape work for several years having been focusing more on wildlife images it was great to challenge myself with a different style of photography again. Below is a gallery of some of my images from the week.
Pine Martin Photography
My evenings entertainment was to try and photograph the resident Pine Martin and Badger that would come to the decking each night to see if any food had been left out. Over the course of the week I was able to get some nice images of the Pine Martin – sadly the badger only visited a couple of times during the night and I know this from reviewing the footage from the trail camera I left out each night.
Laying on the floor of the living room with the patio doors open ajar I was able to capture a few images each night using a 50mm f1.2 Sony lens kindly loaned to me along with a Sony A1. We were very fortunate in that there was a full moon during our stay that gave some extra light and whilst cautious the visitor would sit right in front of me to feast on the mix of peanuts and apple put out while I grabbed some images. I did not use any artificial or flash lighting other than the ambient light coming from the living room and the moon.