Cranesbill and grass, wildflower meadow, Newtonmore, Strathspey The Wildcat Trail along the Spey riverbank at Newtonmore, is, in early summer, a beautiful native wildflower meadow. This is marginal land – of no agricultural value, prone to winter floods, so it has been left alone for nature to flourish, whilst still having some limited use […]
Sunset over Jura and Scarba, Midsummer Solstice, from the Craignish peninsula. Our Northern midsummer light has an astounding quality of light.
Early summer snow, storms, and rainbows over Rothiemurchus and Cairngorm.
Dahlia Bee This particular bee was either asleep, drunk on nectar, or just taking a nap, as it stayed on the flower for over 2 hours, giving the occasional lackadaisical wave of its antennae. Even with the bee at rest it wasn’t an easy photograph – the flowers have very long stems and wave around […]
The play of light, Silver Birch, Strathspey The meadow is a wild grassland, an open space amongst the surrounding birch woods. There are old tumbled ruins suggesting that it was once farmed, or maybe a sheiling where animals were taken to graze during the summer. Earlier in the summer it was full of wild flowers, […]
Evening reflections at the Lily Loch Inspirational Image has been a bit quiet recently – three weeks seem to have gone by in the space of one! A summer evening at one of my favourite places, Lochan Mor in Rothiemurchus, otherwise known as the Lily Loch. Regular readers may notice that the loch and its […]
Raindrops on poppy One from the garden this week, to illustrate summer in Scotland. Its bright and sunny, then as the towering cumulo-nimbus pass, the temperature drops about 10 degrees and the downpour… pours. I love the richness of colour in this, though, with the brightness of the water droplets. I’m very aware of, and […]
Cranesbill, wildflower meadow, River Spey A midummer’s day stroll through the most beautiful wildflower meadow by the banks of the River Spey. Unfortunately the day was overcast, with just occasional brief bursts of sunshine – enough time to focus, not enough time to complete a photo – but the flowers were beautiful. I love the […]
Plockton, West Coast, near Skye The famously-picturesque village of Plockton on the West coast, one of Scotland’s most fjord-like locations – perfect reflections on a perfect summer’s day. This particular image looks slightly surreal, as it combines two exposures (one exposed for the highlights, one for the shadows) to form a ‘High Dynamic Range’ image. […]
Light in the Strath Dulnain woods, Black & White quadtone I do like playing with the dreamy tones you can get in Black & White 🙂 Evening light coming low through the woods with added emphasis from the dramatic shape of the high wispy cloud. The woods here are a surviving fragment of our original native […]
Foxgloves, Rothiemurchus How often so you see such a deep blue sky in Scotland? This tangle of foxgloves were growing in a meadow where trees had been felled, making a vibrant splash of colour on the steep slope. Here’s an etymologist’s musings on the derivation of the name foxglove – the summary? Nobody knows where […]
Clouds and sunbeams, Loch Lomond Dramatic lighting across Loch Lomond and the surrounding hills, as sunbeams swept across the landscape through the fast-moving clouds. This is one of the things I love about Scotland – the constant interplay between clouds and sun, water and land creates a dynamic lighting which totally changes the landscape from […]
