Mountain landscape - Scotland

Buachaille Etive Mòr 3.50am

Like many other photographers before me, but only family and I on this occasion, I’d chosen to ascend Beinn a' Chrùlaiste, which is across the road from Buachaille Etive Mòr (literally - the A82 trunk road between Glasgow and Fort William is just out of shot at the bottom of the photograph). Typically, I’d gone up the evening before taking up camping equipment so we could pitch a tent on the hill and shoot at sunset and sunrise. Buachaille Etive Mòr isn’t the best hill in Scotland for an evening photo shoot because of where the sun sets, which I knew - apps such as Sunseeker are very helpful - but in the morning when the sun rises there’s only the flat expanse of Rannoch Moor to the East so dawn hits the peak early - this is Summer - and lights up some of its striking features, such as Crowberry Tower which you can see prominent on the horizon near the summit of Stob Dearg. Day-break though when I took this photograph wasn’t for another 90 minutes so I took the opportunity to apply a Neutral Density filter (I use a 6-stop ND filter from Lee Filters*) so I could create some images using a longer exposure - 30 seconds - which adds some nice detail to the clouds.

(*) This Breakthrough Photography guide on ND filters I found very helpful when deciding what strength of filter to purchase for mountain landscape photography.