Mountain landscape - Scotland

Stob Coire nan Lochan

Clouds fill the corrie beneath Stob Coire nan Lochan on the Munro, Bidean nam Bidean, at dawn in Glen Coe, Scotland.

This is the second of only two photographs I captured on an otherwise frustrating morning for mountain landscape photography, due to a promising weather forecast (low-lying mist at dawn) that didn’t materialise. I was up well before sunrise scouting out compositions and had waited for 15 or so minutes for the sun to gradually rise and light up the three tall buttresses on Stob Coire nan Lochan - a popular location in Scotland for climbing, both in Summer and Winter - but almost immediately after I’d captured this shot, a thick mist that had settled in overnight returned on the breeze and obscured my view of the mountains. It drifted in and out for a bit, enough for me to make a second composition, but then intensified and after half an hour of no visibility, and no wind which would indicate this would change, I packed up and headed back down to my car. One of the challenges in mountain landscape photography is interpreting the forecast and it could have been awesome but a night out on a Munro is always fun so I didn’t feel like it was a wasted journey.

View more images from Glen Coe and Lochaber on my blog